In 1870, John Rhodes received a lease to mine coal underneath Pontefract Park. John Rhodes had been a coal merchant and had gained increasing prosperity as a mine owner. Mining at Prince of Wales colliery began in 1872.

The first decades of coal production at the colliery was a time of union organisation and conflict in the Yorkshire coalfield. John Rhodes introduced Riddles to transfer coal rather than shovels. Riddles were fork-like and therefore smaller bits of coal fell through the tines. Workers and management disagreed about how the use of this technology would affect the price miners were being paid for coal and for a short time their use was discontinued. In 1898, Rhodes reintroduced riddles and workers went on strike in protest. This strike lasted a year and its success played a part in eliminating the use of Riddles across Yorkshire.

Prince of Wales Union Banner (Photograph by Grace Millar)

In the interwar period, Prince of Wales transferred hands from John Rhodes Ltd to Pontefract Colleries Ltd. On 1 January 1947, the coal industry was nationalised and Prince of Wales became part of the National Coal Board.

In 1977, Prince of Wales was redeveloped in a large scale project that involved the driving of drifts. The redevelopment gave the mine, which was already over a hundred years old, access to unmined seams of coal and much longer projected life. This was opened in 1980 by the Prince of Wales.

On 30 March 1979, Simon Bates and John Peel recorded an hour long show for Radio One from the colliery. They interviewed a variety of people who worked at the mine and took song requests. The first song they played was ‘Shaft’, requested by Peter Smith, an apprentice fitter.

There was considerable hardship in the Yorkshire coalfield during the 1984/5 miners’ strike. The Prince of Wales branch worked with the newly formed women’s support group to provide food for striking miners. At Christmas 1984 less than five per cent of miners had returned to work. Many more had returned by February 1985, but the majority remained on strike until the end of the dispute the following month.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as pits closed across the UK, Prince of Wales became a ‘receiver pit’. Miners whose pit had closed were transferred to Prince of Wales from as far away as Scotland and Wales. In 1995, British Coal sold Prince of Wales, along with 20 other pits, to RJB Mining.

The company that owned Prince of Wales (which had changed its name to UK Coal the previous year) announced that the mine was going to close in January 2002. At that time the pit employed 500 men. The last coal was brought up on 30 August 2002.

Houses being built on the site of Prince of Wales Colliery (Photograph Derek Dye)

The area where the mine stood is being developed as a housing estate. Three streets will be named after people associated with the mine: Colin Butterwick, a long serving manager at the pit; Lord Lofthouse, a former miner and MP for Ponefract and Castleford from 1978-1997 and John Rhodes.

This profile was written towards the beginning of our project, further material about Tower colliery is available at our exhibtion website.