Been reading a book about a house on the Thames, its history and the people who lived in and around it. There's a chapter which mentions the coal trade in the 16-17 hundreds, and it made me think. Where was the first pit in the Sheffield area?

I don't know but some of my ancestors made charcoal in Handsworth in the late 1700s... so maybe Handsworth/Woodhouse area? The first diggings will have been surface outcroppings anyway, if you mean the first deep shaft then could be one of the large ones.

Richard

I doubt it's even recorded when the first coal was dug in Sheffield. There would have been surface diggings going back thousands of years.

Just to tidy things up a little, I suppose I was thinking in deep mining terms, but I suppose the first recovery of coal must've been drift diggings. In the book I mentioned it speaks of sea coal shipped from the Newcastle area in the 13th century.

Cambridge street was known as Coal Pit lane in 1736 so presumably there were coal workings there a good few years before that date.

The Romans were definitley using coal in the north east of England and probably in most places where the outcroppings were obvious.

birley west was sunk and producing coal in 1852,
another one of the oldest kiveton sunk in 1866.
owned by sheffield coal company , they had previously mined in the park area of sheffield in 1805 leaseing the rights off the duke of norfolk. the deep shaft mines were not until 47 years after .
birley west is shirebrook valley in between hackenthorpe and woodhouse , my grandfather worked there and i can remember the coal trains going past thier house on coisley road.