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Huskar Pit was a coal mine on the South Yorkshire Coalfield, sunk to work the Silkstone seam. It was located in Nabs Wood, outside the village of Silkstone Common, in the then West Riding of Yorkshire. It was connected to the Barnsley Canal by the Silkstone Waggonway. Huskar was the scene of a notorious pit disaster on 4 July 1838.
In 1988, the community of Silkstone Parish built another memorial in Nabs Wood, Dry stone walls for Huskar Pit Disaster, 1838 5 August 2008, bbc.co.uk, accessed 24 July 2023 depicting two children at work underground. In 2008, to mark the disaster's 170th anniversary, the event and subsequent inquest were turned into a play Grass Roots webpage www.grass-roots.org.uk by Sylvia le Breton and performed by the local Grass Roots theatre group in Silkstone church. In 2010, a commemorative stained glass window crafted by local residents was installed in one of its chapels. Barnsley mining disaster depicted in Silkstone window, 25 May 2010 bbc.co.uk, accessed 24 July 2023
A book by Alan Gallop about the event's history, "Children of the Dark: Life and Death Underground in Victorian England" was published in 2003 and Peter Bond wrote and performed a song, "Act of God" about the tragedy; the song is included on the 1979 album "See Me Up, See Me Down" from Highway Records.
The Kate Rusby song "Halt the Wagons", from her 2019 album Philosophers, Poets & Kings, references the tragedy from the point of view of a grieving mother.
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