Caphouse Colliery

Caphouse Colliery, originally known as Overton Colliery, was a coal mine in Overton, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It was situated on the Denby Grange estate owned by the Lister Kaye family, and was worked from the 18th century until 1985. It reopened as the Yorkshire Mining Museum in 1988, and is now the National Coal Mining Museum for England.

The colliery was on the Denby Grange Estate, home of the Lister Kayes, in an area where coal had been mined for many years. Coal was close to the surface and the Flockton Thick Seam was mined in 1793. Leases for mining coal were held by Timothy Smith who leased the original Denby Grange Colliery north of Flockton and James Milnes who mined coal at Emroyd and Old Flockton. Some coal was supplied locally, but much more was sent to distant markets to the east of Pontefract via the Calder and Hebble Navigation. Smith's coal pits were under the control of Sir John Lister Kaye by 1817 and were managed by estate managers including John Blenkinsop of the Middleton Collieries who oversaw the enlargement of the enterprise in the 1820s. His son, Sir John Lister Lister-Kaye took over the lease for getting coal from the Overton Colliery on his own estate from the executors of James Milnes in 1827 and began to expand the colliery. Milnes' pits were linked to the Calder and Hebble Navigation at Horbury Bridge by a wooden wagonway which was later laid with iron rails.

Hope Pit was sunk close by in 1827 and the Blossom Pit on the opposite side of the Wakefield to Austerlands turnpike road, the A642, was sunk by 1840. Hope Pit's shaft descends 215 yards and produced coal after 1829. The coal was wound by horse gins until the 1920s. It was one of the earliest Yorkshire coal mines to use electrical coal cutters. The Inman Water Shaft was sunk to 97 yards in about 1840 to pump water from Hope Pit and its beam engine house survives. The shaft was later deepened to the New Hards Seam. The pits were originally ventilated by furnaces at the shaft bottoms.

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