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Village in South Yorkshire, England

Elsecar (/audio=En uk Elsecar. ogg/'/ɛ//l//s//ᵻ//k//ɑːr/, /local/'/ɛ//l//s//ᵻ//k//ər/) is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. It is near to Jump and Wentworth, it is also 2 mile (3 km) south of Hoyland, 6 mile (10 km) south of Barnsley and 8 mile (13 km) north east of Sheffield. Elsecar falls within the Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Ward of Hoyland Milton. Elsecar is unique as a name. It is thought to derive from the Old English personal name of Aelfsige (mentioned in Cartulary of Nostell Priory, 1259–66) and the Old Norse word kjarr, denoting a marsh or brushwood. From the late 18th century, Elsecar was transformed into an 'industrial estate village' for nearby Wentworth Woodhouse, with multiple collieries and two major ironworks. It is seen as one of the UK's first model villages and a precursor to Saltaire. A 1795 Newcomen steam engine at the Elsecar New Colliery is the oldest steam engine still in situ, anywhere in the world. The village now attracts over 500,000 visitors each year, to its heritage centre, historic sites and award winning park.

In 1870–72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Elsecar as having a population of 1912 and 353 dwelling places. The village had developed rapidly since a century before, when it had been just a handful of cottages around a village green and a scattering of shallow coal pits, in a valley alongside an ancient stream.

Elsecar's development from the late 18th century can be seen as a microcosm of the whole Industrial Revolution in Britain. The village was nothing more than a series of farms until the 18th century. Although coal had been mined in the area since the 14th century, the first major colliery, Elsecar Old, was not sunk until 1750. It was taken on by the Marquis of Rockingham in 1752, later consolidated onto a hilltop to the west of the village and is thought to have been painted by George Stubbs, around the same time he painted Whistle Jacket. The village was transformed from the 1790s at the direction of the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse, with the sinking of its first deep colliery, the cutting of a canal, the building of two ironworks and associated housing designed by architect John Carr of York. As a result, Elsecar is now recognised to be one of the first model villages in the UK and a precursor to historic places such as Saltaire. The subsequent development and expansion of the village continued to be closely overseen by the Fitzwilliam dynasty. Uniquely in Europe, Elsecar is understood to have been an 'industrial estate village', built and operated in addition to the family's traditional aristocratic estate village of Wentworth. Additions to the village instructed by the Earls in the mid 19th century included rows of miners and ironworkers' cottages, a miners lodging house, church, indoor market, coaching inn, school, cricket club and architecturally impressive workshops, known as the New Yard. A private railway station for the Earl, including a waiting room for privileged and Royal guests, was added in 1870 and now serves as a nursery for local children.

The Earls oversaw expansion of deep coalmining and sinking of new collieries for over a century and maintained a direct controlling interest in the management of the village's collieries until nationalisation in 1947. In 1794 5, the village's first deep colliery was sunk, a few metres to the east of the village's proposed canal basin. Over the following years, Elsecar New Colliery was expanded and the original Elsecar (Old) Colliery modernised. In the 1840s and 1850s, two state of the art collieries were sunk, Simon Wood and Elsecar Low (later renamed Hemingfield). The latter survives, has been rescued and is now in community ownership. In 1851, Queen Victoria was taken outside the Great Exhibition, to see a column of Barnsley Seam coal which had been somehow mined intact by Elsecar miners and taken to London. The last colliery to open was Elsecar Main in 1908. King George V went underground there in 1912, for which he received respect and recognition, as news had come through that morning of a terrible disaster at Cadeby Colliery. King George was not the first Royal to go underground in the UK, as he acknowledged during his visit. King William IV, when Duke of Clarence, had been taken into Elsecar Old Colliery in 1828. Elsecar Main Colliery was closed in October 1983. Many Elsecar colliers went to work at Cortonwood, just down the canal towpath, where a few months later the Miners Strike of 1984 5 began. Elsecar Workshops were sold off by British Coal soon after, ending the village's ties to the coal industry. In the following years, the village suffered from severe economic and social problems, as did all the mining villages in the region. The mid 1990s saw the repurposing of the former colliery workshops into a new visitor destination, Elsecar Heritage Centre.

During the sinking of the Elsecar New Colliery in 1795, Earl Fitzwilliam had a large atmospheric beam engine installed to pump water from deep underground. It is of the type invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Newcomen invented the world's first practical steam engine, creating mechanical power using steam for the first time. Newcomen's genius was to use the force of atmospheric pressure acting on a piston at the top of a steam filled cylinder, into which water had been injected to create a vacuum, to move the piston and a beam attached to it. James Watt made the steam engine far more efficient half a century later, but by that time Newcomen engines were widely established and powering industry across the UK and further afield. Now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, the Elsecar Newcomen is understood to be the oldest steam engine in the world still in situ where it was originally built. In 2014, a major project was completed to rescue and conserve the engine, supported by Barnsley Council, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England. It now runs on hydraulics with regular open days from Easter to October each year when visitors can also look down the New Colliery mineshafts.

John and William Darwin & Co. of Sheffield opened the first furnace at Elsecar Ironworks (at the bottom of Forge Lane) in 1795. In 1799 another ironworks was founded at Milton, by the Walker Brothers of Rotherham, less than a mile to the west of Elsecar, on a hilltop in full view of the village of Wentworth just across the valley. In 1838 a horse drawn tramroad was constructed to link the Dearne and Dove Canal with the Milton Ironworks, Tankersley Park ironstone mines, Lidgett Colliery and the Thorncliffe Ironworks at Chapeltown. Stationary engines were used for the incline sections, and remained in operation until about 1880.

In March 2017 Elsecar was designated as one of ten Heritage Action Zones (HAZ) by Historic England with the benefit that the area would receive a share of £6 million. As part of the HAZ project, in 2019 a Historic Area Assessment was developed, "intended to illustrate the varied character and significance of the village and its setting in order to inform interpretation, conservation and development under the direction of revised planning guidance". A major legacy of the Elsecar Heritage Action Zone was the creation of two new Scheduled Ancient Monuments at Hemingfield Colliery and the Elsecar Ironworks, the extension of the village conservation areas and extensive listings, creating many new Grade II* listed buildings.

Elsecar Heritage Centre is a visitor attraction based in the former New Yard colliery workshops. Operated by Barnsley Museums, it has independent shops, studios, galleries, cafes and a large antiques centre. A visitor centre and regular tours share the unique history of the village, and includes a highly detailed digital reconstruction of the village and valley as it was in the 1880. The former rolling mill of the Elsecar Ironworks is now a major event space, with standing capacity of up to 1000 people. Elsecar Park has a bandstand, children's playground, a cafe, and a pitch and putt golf course. The reservoir, now a local nature reserve, is adjacent to the upper park. The landscape and valley have extensive archaeological remains, but many are on private land or in dangerous locations. It is recommended that all visitors keep to public rights of way or take organised tours. In 1793 An Act of Parliament authorised the making of the Dearne and Dove Canal between Swinton and Barnsley, with two branches, one to Worsbrough and another to Elsecar at a location then known as Cobcar Ing. The canal was later extended into the centre of village, next to the New Colliery and Elsecar Ironworks, and was fully opened in 1798. The upper stretch of the canal was restored in the 1990s. Its towpath is now part of the Trans Pennine Trail and has recently been restored and widened with funding from the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.

The village has its own cricket club, established in 1854, which plays in the South Yorkshire Cricket League. It also has several junior teams that play in the Barnsley & District Junior Cricket Association. It was represented in the FA Cup by Elsecar Main F. C. in the 1900s.