Wath upon Dearne, United Kingdom

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. The population swelled and local infrastructure developed round the coal-mining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. 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.

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 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.