Last weekend, I took our eight-year-old to the National Coal Mining Museum for England. It was our second visit, the first being in 2017 which I wrote about at the time. Our eight-year-old was only one then, and so we couldn’t go down the old mineshaft, but this time we could.
This is now the third mine that we’ve been down in as many months; last month, we went to the one in Beamish, and in May we went to the one in the Black Country Living Museum. Caphouse Colliery, the mine at the National Coal Mining Museum, is different as it’s primarily a deep mine, and so the tour enters and exits using a lift in a 140 metre deep mine shaft. There is a drift entrance to the mine as well, but it’s mainly there for emergency evacuations now and isn’t part of the tour.
Mining ceased at Caphouse in the 1980s and it became a museum shortly after. So, whereas Beamish and the BCLM are set in the early twentieth century, here the mine tour covers the full history from the early 1800s right up to the more mechanised latter times. Though coal is no longer mined here, the mine is still regulated as an active coal mine and all battery powered devices have to be surrendered before the tour – hearing aids being the only exception. As such, I don’t have any photos from down the mine.
Back on the surface, we had a look at the indoor exhibitions, about miners’ lives and a special exhibition marking forty years since the Miners’ Strike. Around the colliery, you can see the old steam engine that powered the lift mechanism, and the Pithead Baths, where miners would start and end their shifts with a communal shower. There was also a cage with some canaries – the literal canaries in a coalmine.
We then caught the narrow gauge paddy train which takes you to the other end of the site, where there are new stables for horses and ponies. Ponies were still used down coal mines as recently as 1994, and so when the museum opened, it served as retirement stables. Whilst the ponies there now are rescues, none of them have worked down a mine.
As it was the summer holidays, there were some additional activities on for kids. A large sandpit was outside the Hope Pit to recreate a beach; when miners eventually became eligible for a week’s paid holiday, thousands would go to various UK seaside resorts like Blackpool, Skegness and Cleethorpes.
We had a good time; in retrospect, I’m surprised it’s taken us so long to go back, as it’s only just over half an hour’s drive away.
Accessibility
The underground mine tour is mostly accessible to wheelchair users, but the no batteries rule applies. Some of the buildings aren’t accessible due to their age. There are accessible toilets but the nearest Changing Places toilet is a ten minute drive away. More information is available on the web site.
Parking is available on site; it’s normally free, but there’s a £5 charge in summer (which in turn gives free use of the paddy train). There’s an hourly bus service between Wakefield and Huddersfield which calls at the museum.