Introduction
Doncaster is a busy but very average, pretend-modern, culture-free town on the southern edge of the Northern industrial area of England, population 290,100, reflecting little of the abject poverty of the inner-city areas of Bradford, Sheffield or Hull nor the steady affluence of York or Harrogate and some of the smaller county towns. How has Doncaster reached the situation it’s in now?
Successive waves of development have been Doncaster’s lot over the centuries. Other towns have developed much more gently: evolved rather. Not Doncaster. From its Roman roots to its hey-day arguably in Georgian times, change has moved in swathes through the town. The building of the racecourse brought real money, royalty even; the coming of the railways added to that to some extent but also led to an influx of workers that required workers’ housing. And of course, the sinking of the coalmines changed the town out of all recognition.
The affluent were already moving out of the town into surrounding areas away from the industrial workers’ terraces by the time the mines were fully operational prior to 1920. Easy access to rail and coal brought heavy industry. The railways did bring Doncaster a mark of honour in that some of the best of the country’s steam locomotives were built at ’The Plant’: Flying Scotsman, Mallard (holder of the world steam loco speed record) and Sir Nigel Gresley to name three. The Plant was a major employer in the town until it was much reduced in stature to basic track work in the ‘90s.
Doncaster was until the pit closures of the 1980s and ‘90s ringed by a number of collieries, each in a large village of its own (the total covering an area of 226 square miles, the largest Metropolitan Borough in the country). In the north was Askern colliery and, moving clockwise, Bentley, Hatfield, Markham Main at Armthorpe, Rossington, Harworth and Edlington. Slightly further out were Maltby, Denaby Main, Hickleton, Thorne and Brodsworth. The population of most of these villages is upwards of 10,000, meaning that a very substantial fraction of the population of the Metropolitan area (as created in 1974) was connected with the coal industry. Only Hatfield and Rossington are still operational although on a much-reduced basis, and now Hatfield is due to close soon. The villages still remain and are struggling to overcome a legacy of squalor that successive local and national government administrations tolerated.
