Newspaper Extracts
Subterranean Fire at Lower Haugh
14th June, 1848The village of Lower Haugh, near Rotherham, on the estate of Earl Fitzwilliam, presents a curious and interesting aspect. The fact is well known in the village - although we have never heard it spoken of in this neighbourhood - that an extensive bed of coal beneath the village is on fire, and has been in that condition, burning with greater or less intensity, for at least twenty years. A gentleman residing in Sheffield, whom curiosity induced to visit the locality one day the present week, has furnished us with the following particulars:-
The coal in certain places bassets out, - that is, it comes up to the surface of the ground, and it was at one of these bassets that the fire originally commenced, having been ignited by a "clamp" (a fire for burning stones intended for road materials). The subterranean fire has continued to advance in various directions up to the present time, manifested by the appearance at intervals of smoke and flames at the surface of the ground; the spread of which has generally been stopped, however, by puddling the eruptions with clay, etc.
A feeling of apprehension as to the ultimate fate of the village has always continued to prevail, and we understand that a good many years ago the destruction of the mausoleum of the Wentworth family was threatened by the approach of the fire, but happily the calamity was averted by severing the bed of coal, for which purpose a shaft was specially sunk. Latterly the work of destruction appears to have been going on with unwanted rapidity, and, naturally enough, has created a corresponding degree of alarm. Our informant saw two beautifully detached cottages, the foundation of which is so undermined and sunk, that one or both of them have ceased to be occupied. The walls of one of the cottages had quite separated, and the building must have tumbled down had not means been resorted to for keeping it together.
The ground in several large tracts is one huge hotbed, and where the heat is not so intense as to destroy vegetation, the villagers turn it to very good account in raising early crops of vegetables. Pens were seen some weeks ago flourishing luxuriously in the open air; and potatoes are so forward, that one crop has been already secured, and a second crop got into the ground. The exposed earth is quite warm, even in the depth of winter.
Were this state of things confined within prescribed limits it would be all very well, but this is by no means the case. The unnatural heat engenders a disagreeable smoke, which is continually ascending and adulterating the atmosphere, doubtless to the detriment of animal health, and the houses in the worst localities are often filled with warm air strongly charged with sulphur, rendering them as habitations little better than a coal pit. The cellars, naturally, are the worst.
Source:Sheffield Times
