Welcome to the website of the multi award winning Swannington Heritage Trust.  We have a fabulous group of volunteers who work fantastically hard to achieve amazing things

• restoring the dilapidated shell of Hough Mill
• recovering neglected  railway and coal mining sites and managing them as woodlands and grass heathland
• researching Swannington’s history, cataloguing the archive and publishing historical information
• running events, tours and talks – although this has halted in 2020 because of coronavirus.

Stunning Success at 2021 Heritage Awards

The Trust entered six of the nine categories for which it was eligible, winning three and gaining a highly commended in a fourth:

• Museum Of The Year – Winner – Keeping Trust sites open during the pandemic, digital research and cataloguing, digital engagement via social media and website, adding sails to Hough Mill, plus preparations for 2021 and beyond.
• Best Research Project – Winner – Researching 500 people for the Child Coal Miners project looking at child miners on the 1841, 1851 and 1861 census.
• Best Project Under £750 – Winner – The Extraordinary People of Swannington outdoor exhibition and Swannington families website pages which involved a huge amount of social media engagement.
• Behind The Scenes – Highly Commended – During the pandemic the Archive Group switched to zoom meetings and digital working to catalogue more than 5,000 photographs, over 200 documents and index 300 people.

Coronavirus (Covid-19).  The situation can always change but our present status is:

Walking Visitors – Our public footpaths and bridleway are permanently open.  The permissive paths down the Incline, around the Califat Spinney, Gorse Field and Snibston No 3 are open 6am to midnight.  Please stay safe and apply social distancing as well as treating all gates, signs, benches etc as potentially coronavirus contaminated by a recent visitor, so hand washing or sanitising is important.

Hough Mill – A really difficult decision but the Mill will not open during the 2020 season due to Coronavirus (COVID-19). We take our responsibilities towards our small team of mill volunteers and our visitors very seriously and feel at the moment opening the Mill is not appropriate.  We are reviewing this inline with Government guidelines.