The peat was cut on the moors and, once it had dried, transported to several works on 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge tramways, always called trams locally.

A major change occurred in 1994, when Fisons company gave English Nature 2,340 acres (946 ha) of moorland, although they retained the right to continue extracting peat on some of it.

Hatfield Moor gas field was discovered accidentally while drilling for oil, and a major blow-out and fire occurred.

The moors had been used as a source for domestic fuel, in the form of peat, since at least the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,[3] and probably as early as the Roman or pre-Roman periods.

In the early 1800s, peat was still being formed: William Harrison reported that a short time after moving to Thorne, a rise in the surface of the moors has obscured Crowle Church, previously visible from his home.

[3] As early as the late 1960s, academics and conservation agencies expressed concerns that the moors had been so badly damaged by peat extraction and farming that they were not worth saving.

During the week, the peat extraction company Fisons would cut drains to begin the process of lowering the water table.

In 1985, the Nature Conservancy Council bought 180 acres (73 ha) of Thorne Waste, which had been part of the area worked by a canal network.

[21] In 2020, a major fire broke out at Hatfield Moors which burnt for more than ten days and covered an area of more than 3,500 acres (1,400 ha).

George Stovin recorded that labourers dug peat turves in the summer, which were dressed by their wives and children, before being exported by boat through Thorne sluice and the River Don.

The cost proved excessive, and he installed a stationary steam engine and narrow gauge railway tracks, on which small wagons were pushed by hand, to aid the work.

He died in 1882, just as ideas to use the peat commercially began to replace the concept of attempting to make the moors suitable for agriculture.

It could also be used for packing of fruit, as a replacement for sandbags, for fertiliser and as potting compost, as well as the manufacture of paraffin, creosote and tar.

The owners of Thorne and Hatfield Moors leased their lands to peat companies, whose workers would dig drains, cut the turves, and stack them up to allow them to dry, so that they were ready for sale.

Dutch tools and working practices were introduced, and the immigrants cut around 14 miles (23 km) of canals to transport peat to the mill at Moorends.

They gained control of works at Creyke's Siding and Moorends to the west, Medge Hall to the south, Swinefleet to the east, and Old Goole in the north, together with the mill on Hatfield Moors.

[28] Following the end of the First World War, sales of peat began to decline, as working horses were replaced by motor lorries and tractors.

Despite this, the agricultural supplies company Fisons bought the operation in February 1963, and began upgrading the works at Swinefleet and Hatfield.

The railway company also built a 5-mile (8.0 km) branch from Epworth in 1909,[32] in the hope of gaining the peat traffic from Hatfield Works, but they continued to cart their output north to Maud's Bridge, on the Doncaster to Scunthorpe line.

[36] Rotherham includes an engraving of a peat wagon in his book, consisting of a farm cart, still with its road wheels attached, but with a four-wheeled bogie under each of the axles to allow it to be pulled along the rails by two horses.

[39] The first use of powered vehicles on the tramways occurred in 1947, when one of the fitters at Moorends Works built a machine from a wooden wagon frame and parts from an Austin Swallow car.

They consisted of little more than an engine and driver's seat mounted on a chassis, and were used on the moors where the peat was loaded into wagons, only returning to the works for maintenance.

They were manufactured in Leeds by Robert Hudson (Raletrux) Ltd, and were subsequently fitted with a fine inner mesh, to enable them to carry fragmented peat rather than turves.

[41] On the moors, when dried turves were ready to be collected, temporary track sections were laid at right angles to the main line, and a portable turntable was installed.

They were much more powerful than the engines they replaced, with the four-axle arrangement ensuring that the axle loading was low enough for the existing track, and they were very popular with their operators.

The work included replacing the original 5-cylinder engines with 6-cylinder models, improving the sanding gear and driver's seating arrangements, and fitting a more reliable air-conditioning system for the cab.

[65] It was the first onshore storage facility of its kind in Britain, and a 25-year storage contract was agreed between Edinburgh Oil and Gas and ScottishPower,[64] but in December 2006 the owners sold the well head site and the operating licences to ScottishPower, who now operate the Lindholme gas compressor station and also hold the rights to the Hatfield West field.

There is a gas offtake for the National Transmission System (NTS) at Beltoft, North Lincolnshire, just to the south of the M180 motorway and to the east of Hatfield Moor.

The gas is heated in a water bath heater, passes through a pressure let-down skid and continues to the Hatfield Moor well site for injection into the reservoir for storage.

Here the gas is dehydrated with glycol and compressed using a gas-turbine driven compressor to a pressure suitable for export back to Beltoft and into the National Transmission System.