The first references to mining in this area go back to the early sixteenth century. For several hundred years, local men, women and children worked coal out of the ground, from bell pits, drifts or just the outcrops where seams of coal came to the surface...

The 1901 census for Kiveton Park provides a real insight into the character of the village. To take one example, the Blackwell family, whose sons Walter and Arthur fought in the First World War, lived in the New Rows, surrounded by a fascinating...

The coal industry in the inter-war years was marked by lockouts, strikes and economic depression. There was a short economic boom after the armistice of 1918...

Local people who lived through the Second World War can clearly remember the day it began: one young man, himself not far off calling-up age, was sat in the corner of a house on Wales Road...

The war came to an end in 1945, amidst scenes of jubilation and relief in the village. There were parades and celebrations in the streets...

One of the most striking aspects of Kiveton Park and Wales are their distinctive buildings. From the Pit Manager's house at Wales Bar in the west to Field House on Hard Lane in the east...

If the changes of the 1960s to the colliery were significant then the transformations of the 1970s were immense...

Many local people see the strike as something not to be talked about, something to be left in the past and not brought up. Others are prepared to talk about the strike...

The last years were tense, from the very first days back at work. There was victimisation of activists. One man who stayed out was put on a team developing roadways with men who had gone back early in the strike - he refused to talk to them...

There are many different views about life at the pit, looking back from now, over a decade since it shut. "I'm glad they put a lid on it, don't ever tell anyone I said that though." "It was the best thing that ever happened to this community..."