Wath can be traced to
Norman times. It appears in the 1086
Domesday Book as
Wad and
Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–
Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of
Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the
River Dearne. The name has been linked to the
Latin vadum The town received a
royal charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday
market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814. Until
local government reorganisation in 1974, Wath was in the
historic county of the
West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby
Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and
Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a
pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby
Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor
James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
Coal mining The town lies over the
South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality
bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive
bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific
Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialisation in the 19th and early 20th century. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way. By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries –
Wath Main and
Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the
Second World War, the collieries clustered around
Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a
coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Railways Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance.
Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway
marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-
Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the
Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the
Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in
North-West England. Wath once had three railway stations:
Wath Central in Moor Road,
Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and
Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the
Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the
Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The decline of coal The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship. The
1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of
Cortonwood Colliery in
Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to
scrubland and countryside, dotted with
light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as
brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started. ==Today==