Harworth Colliery Institute

My garden shed is bigger than this

The village of Harworth is situated further north than Sheffield, Liverpool & Stockport. It has a Doncaster postal code & Doncaster telephone number. However, do not let the Royal Mail & British Telecom's South Yorkshire categorisations fool you. Harworth Colliery Institute are very much a Nottinghamshire football club.

It is true that the village is a whisker from the White Rose County, but no one can deny Harworth CI the honour of being Nottinghamshire's most northerly football club. The Club was founded in 1931, forging close links with the neighbouring Colliery itself established in 1919 as one of the deepest mines in the country at up to 900 metres below ground level. Since the formation of the football club, Harworth Colliery has been at the centre of years of bitter political struggle, especially during the miner's strikes of 1936 & 1984. Thankfully, the Football Club remained intact throughout as a beacon of hope for the community. Perhaps the Club's finest hour came in 1980, when they reached the 3rd Round of the F.A.Vase. They can also harp back to their 1987/88 titles success in the Central Midlands Supreme Division, a year after having been a founding member of the CML.

These days there is very little left to connect the Club with its historical past. The colliery was mothballed in 2006, but its massive concrete shafthead towers remain, standing out like monoliths to anyone passing by on the nearby A1. Unfortunately, there is a little less grandeur about Recreation Ground.

The Ground has two stands which border the north & east sides of the ground, both of which could certainly do with a bit of a sprucing up. The North Stand, running the length of the pitch, is made up from a steel frame, covered on three sides by corrugated iron. The roof, also corrugated iron, is interestingly curved, thus ensuring that the rain runs off away from spectators. The interior is made up of a two level terrace, depressingly full of litter, debris and glass. On either side of the stand are the home and away dug outs, painted in red. A low level wall runs in front of these three structures, painted white.

The East Stand is a very similar affair to that of the North Stand, though it has it's backboard partially torn away, and more humorously, a small tree has begun to sprout from the corner!

In total, the Ground has standing accommodation for approximately 200 people. What remains at the Recreation Ground are a couple of dilapidated outhouses (possibly ex-toileting and eatery facilities), a crumbling turnstile bearing the clubs name, and a heavy steel white painted rope circumnavigating the exterior of the pitch. It should also be noted that the Recreation Ground is fully enclosed on three sides by a concrete wall, and a green steel fence by the wooded area on the south side of the Ground.

Whilst there can be no denying that a lick of paint wouldn't go a miss on the Recreation Ground, this is not to say the set up at Harworth is disappointing, far from it. As well as the main pitch, their is a large and excellently run Sports & Social Club on the site with ample car parking available, five-a-side pitches, several other well maintained grass pitches (including a pitch with a dug out running adjacent to the Recreation Ground), a play area and an absolutely marvellous BMX cycle track fit for national trials, from which the higher level photographs were taken. It is for cycling that Harworth is most famous, being the home of Tom Simpson, one of the finest world champion cyclists this country has ever produced (his body is interred in Harwoth cemetray, and there is a museum dedicated to him within the Sports & Social Club).

The Club also boasts a set of four well maintained six cluster floodlights, seemingly doing their best to try and out do the nearby colliery pithead in regal stature.

Also on offer is a mobile telephone mast in one corner of the Ground, which in the shadow of the colliery pithead, provides an interesting contrast of old and new.

Future Plans

Harworth have been granted permission to build new changing facilities, with the intention of them being suitable for Step 5 football.