Explore the Museum

Experience the Life of a Working Colliery.

This site was a modern colliery until it closed after more than two hundred years of coal production.  See what a 1980s pit was like and meet the people who worked in the industry.

The Pit Yard was the heart of the colliery.

The Pit Yard has always been a hive of activity with coal wagons or coal lorries constantly in and out to load up with coal. Defined by the strange collection of temporary buildings that grew up around the headstocks. Yards were also storage spots for spare cages, wooden pit props and other spare parts.

Meet Alan and find out how coal was transported when it left the pit.

The Weighbridge is a massive set of scales used for weighing lorries and the coal they carried. Meet Alan, the weighbridge man at Caphouse when the colliery closed. It was his responsibility to weigh all the coal that left the site and who had bought it.

Journey 140 metres underground and experience what it was like to work in a mine.

Get kitted out with your hard hat and battery lamp then step into the ‘cage’ to descend 140m underground to discover the harsh realities of coal mining through the centuries. Hear all about your guide’s working life and experiences in the coalmine.

Discover the different ages of mining, from Victorian times when women and children worked underground alongside men, find out about the role of pit ponies and how modern machinery changed coal mining.

Look down the 140m furnace shaft and see how deep our mine goes.

The shaft once helped to provide the fresh air needed to work safely underground. After surviving about 130 years, an HLF grant enabled the Museum to complete much needed repairs and now allow visitors to look down into the glass-capped shaft. 

The Screens Building, where coal was cleaned and sorted, is accessible through guided tours on specific days.

The Coal Screening Plant or Screens Building was used to clean and sort the coal when it had been hauled to the surface. The building or more accurately, this collection of structures were built over time, made of tin sheeting and wooden floors and evolved as the pit grew.

Currently the Screens are not open to the public but on certain days, the Museum runs special Screens tours. For more information about Screens tours, ask at the Welcome Area in the Hub.

See our steam-winding engine which, for over 100 years, moved men and coal in and out of the pit.

Winding is about getting the miner into the pit and the coal out. As mining went deeper, winding machines improved. A winding engine is a large winch which hauled cages up and down the vertical mineshaft.

Find out how 1842 changed the lives of women and children forever.

The Victorian Gallery examines what mining was like in the 19th century. In 1842 the first coal mining act of Parliament banned women, girls and boys under 10 from working underground. Discover the conditions in mining at that point and the effect of the first legislation to touch the mining industry.

For over 100 years, Lancashire Boilers created the steam that powered the colliery’s winding engine.

It was steam that powered the Industrial Revolution. The steam engine used pressure, produced by steam, to move a piston back and forth. The force of the piston was transformed, by a connecting rod and flywheel, into a rotational force which powered machinery. Steam provided reliable power and could be used to run large machines, like steam winders and colliery fans.

At present, the Boiler House is closed to the public. Members of our volunteer conservation team are currently working on a project to restore them.

Experience where miners started and ended their working day.

Visit the place where miners started and ended their day. Pithead baths started to be built in the early 20th century. Before then, miners would have to travel home every day, covered in coal dust.

The baths were overseen by the baths attendant whose job it was to clean, keep things tidy and sell things like soap, towels or even chewing tobacco.

At the far end of the baths, have a peek inside the medical centre. This is where the pit nurse would be based unless she had to go underground to deal with a casualty.

Understand how computers on the surface monitor conditions and production underground.

Colliery-control rooms are used to monitored and troubleshoot operations underground and have come to play a vital part in the smooth running of a pit.

Discover how miners overcame the challenges of working underground.

Find out about the men and machines that worked underground and see what equipment helped the industry develop. So come and take a look at some of the tools of the trade!

Downstairs you can see how miners overcame the many challenges of working underground. How they conquered the darkness underground.  And how they developed machines to cut the coal. Upstairs you can see how coal was transported. See how people communicated underground from signal wires to our modern mining control room from Kellingley colliery.

The Kellingley Memorial commemorates miners who died at Kellingley Colliery since its opening in 1958.

The Memorial originally stood outside the pit offices at Kellingley Colliery, West Yorkshire, the last British deep mine. The memorial commemorates miners who died at Kellingley Colliery since its opening in 1958.

When it was decided to close Kellingley in 2015, the memorial was carefully taken down and reassembled near the Screens Building at Caphouse. It now stands not just for those that died at Kellingley but marks the end of the last British colliery.