Elsecar Heritage Center is a local history museum. It is part of the Barnsley Museums. The museum site has very ancient origins: it was the 4th Earl of Fitzwilliam who inherited the estate of Wentworth from his uncle in 1782 and at the end of 1795 he founded Elsecar New Colliery. Shortly thereafter, Elsecar Ironworks was also built by John and William Darwin & Co. You can still see the ruins of the buildings today. Here, cast iron was sold and household kitchens, supply tracks for coal mine trams, window frames and arches were produced. As the mines began to close, the demand for the workshop facilities began to decline, eventually leading to their closure. In 1986 the Department of the Environment classified these buildings as of particular architectural or historical interest. All the buildings have since been restored. Here the visitor can discover how the Fitzwilliam counts created a new model village, with crowded workshops, mighty steel mills and functioning coal mines.