History of The Cottage, Silkstone

The Cottage is built on Silkstone Cross and, along with the Waggonway, is one of the few remaining visible links in Silkstone village to the coal mining industry. It was built in the early to mid 1800s as offices for the nearby Cross Pit which was located behind The Cottage in what is now the Recreation Ground. Two mine shafts of Cross Pit, which were located where the Trim Trail has been built, were capped in recent living memory. The Cross Pit was closed sometime around the mid 1890s and all the buildings except the offices (The Cottage) have since been demolished.

The exact date of the construction of The Cottage is unknown but it was after 1829 as a map of the that date doesn’t show the cottage, but it is shown on a later map dated 1842.

A single track railway (waggonway) built by the colliery owner Robert Couldwell Clarke of Noblethorpe Hall ran directly to the side through a narrow gap between the Cottage and another now demolished building which was known as the Tommy Shop (this stood facing the roadside on the carpark to the supermarket and filling station). The Tommy Shop was where the miners purchased goods from a store that was operated by the colliery owners. This allowed purchases to made on credit then deducted subsequently from the miners’ wages.

The waggons were pulled by horses and a modern day representation of the waggons has been recreated opposite The Cottage.

SILKSTONE WAGGONWAY

The Silkstone Waggonway was constructed to transport coal by horse drawn waggons from the rich coal seams in the Silkstone area to Barnby Basin (Cawthorne) at the end of the waggon way where the coals were loaded onto barges and sent on the Barnsley Canal eventually to the east coast where the coal was shipped all over the country. The coal waggon at Silkstone Cross is a life size replica of the type of waggon which was used to take coal along the wagonway.

Barnsley Canal was opened in 1799 and Barnby Basin in 1802. An Act of Parliament in 1808 authorised the construction of the waggonway from Silkstone Cross to the canal basin at Barnby, and construction began in 1809. Many original stone sleepers installed at this time remain in place along the route of the waggonway.

At that time there were many pits in the Silkstone area and carting coal out of the valley was extremely slow and expensive and the opening of the waggonway into the heart of the village was seen as a massive boost to the profitability of these local mines. The Clarke family of Noblethorpe Hall owned many of these local mines and he had a big influence in ensuring the waggonway was successful.

One of these was Cross Pit which was directly behind the cottage in what is now the Recreation Ground. The cottage was built (possibly in the 1830s) as the offices to the Cross Pit. Located next to the offices was the Tommy Shop where the garage carpark now stands. The waggons from the pit (and other pits further away) went directly between the two buildings then onto the wagonway to the canal. Cross Pit was disused by 1893.

The waggonway and traffic on the canal began to decline from the time that the new railway line was opened through Silkstone Common in 1852 and by Aug 1872 it was reported that all the rails from the waggonway had been removed.

THE COTTAGE IN RECENT TIMES

By the 1930s the cottage was used partly as a doctor’s surgery. The cottage was sold in 1939 as part of the disposal of the Noblethorpe Estate (three cottages at Silkstone Cross were sold for £300)

In the late 1950s / early 1960’s part of the cottage was occupied by the Oakden family and part of the upstairs rooms was used as a surgery – Doctor Sandy and Doctor Walker held surgeries there. They were both based at the Huddersfield Road, Barnsley Practice. Patients would wait to see the doctors in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs just inside the front door before they were called to the upstairs room where the doctors’ surgery was held.

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