Sled Shoe Colliery

Sled Shoe Colliery, Farndale East

This colliery, comprising of some 40 or so pits, lies on either side of the Castleton to Hutton-le-Hole road, where it runs on Blakey Ridge, about three-quarters of a mile south of the Lion Inn. There is another group of pits at Sled Shoe Bridge, a little to the south, and others around Kettle Howe, a little to the north.

The area had been worked for Lime coals and was almost exhausted before Mathew Ryley tried working it in 1792. Nevertheless, according to Seaton, Ryley “expected was some [Lime Coals] left, has got a few this summer and being of soft mucky quality farmers don’t wish to buy them unless such a time as last summer when no others are to be had”. In his 1796 measurement, Seaton recorded that “Mathew Ryley having wrought here some little time after this colliery was measured last year [1795] (and before the coals were quite out) and which cannot now be calculated the work being shut up. I therefore charge him the sum of £2.63” (NYCRO ZEW IV 13/1 – Memorandum – 1796)

Ryley, who gave Sled Shoe up in 1796, was in partnership with John Featherston at Blakey from 1797 to 1801. He also appears in the Lastingham parish registers between 1782 and 1794 as a collier.