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Agecroft Colliery was a
coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...
on the
Manchester Coalfield The Manchester Coalfield is part of the South Lancashire Coalfield, the coal seams of which were laid down in the Carboniferous Period. Some easily accessible seams were worked on a small scale from the Middle Ages, and extensively from the begi ...
that opened in 1844 in the Agecroft district of
Pendlebury Pendlebury is a town in the City of Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The population at the 2011 Census was 13,069. It lies north-west of Manchester city centre, north-west of Salford and south-east of Bolton. Historically in Lancash ...
,
Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...
, England. It exploited the
coal seam Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...
s of the Middle
Coal Measures In lithostratigraphy, the coal measures are the coal-bearing part of the Upper Carboniferous System. In the United Kingdom, the Coal Measures Group consists of the Upper Coal Measures Formation, the Middle Coal Measures Formation and the Lower Coal ...
of the
Lancashire Coalfield The Lancashire Coalfield in North West England was an important British coalfield. Its coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests in the Carboniferous period over 300 million years ago. The Romans may have been the fir ...
. The colliery had two spells of use; the first between 1844 and 1932, when the most accessible coal seams were exploited, and a second lease of life after extensive development in the late 1950s to access the deepest seams.


First colliery (1844–1932)

Andrew Knowles acquired the lease of coal under the Agecroft estate in 1823 and his colliery is shown on an 1830 plan alongside the
Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal The Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal is a disused canal in Greater Manchester, England, built to link Bolton and Bury with Manchester. The canal, when fully opened, was long. It was accessed via a junction with the River Irwell in Salford. ...
not far from old workings near Park House Bridge. Two shafts were sunk by
Andrew Knowles and Sons Andrew Knowles and Sons was a coal mining company that operated on the Manchester Coalfield in and around Clifton, Greater Manchester, Clifton near Pendlebury, in the Historic counties of England, historic county of Lancashire, England. Robert Kno ...
in 1844. The colliery's screens and surface buildings were modernised in the early 1890s and No 3 and No 4 shafts were sunk to 700 yards to the Trencherbone mine starting in 1894 and continuing into 1900. They allowed working an area to the south of the
Pendleton Fault The Pendleton Fault, sometimes called the Irwell Valley Fault, stretches for about from Bolton in Greater Manchester along the Irwell Valley through Pendleton to Poynton in Cheshire, running northwest–southeast. The fault throws the beds o ...
. The fault to the north, with a displacement of 695 metres to the northeast, formed a natural boundary to the colliery. The colliery was located close (less than a mile) from
Clifton Hall Colliery Clifton Hall Colliery was one of two coal mines in Clifton (the other was Wet Earth Colliery) on the Manchester Coalfield, historically in Lancashire which was incorporated into the City of Salford in Greater Manchester, England in 1974. Cl ...
(Lumns Lane,
Clifton Clifton may refer to: People *Clifton (surname) *Clifton (given name) Places Australia * Clifton, Queensland, a town **Shire of Clifton *Clifton, New South Wales, a suburb of Wollongong *Clifton, Western Australia Canada *Clifton, Nova Scotia ...
). A tunnel linked the two collieries which allowed 122 men and boys to escape from the upper seams following the 1885 Clifton Hall Colliery disaster. The colliery had access to the
Manchester and Bolton Railway The Manchester and Bolton Railway was a railway in the historic county of Lancashire, England, connecting Salford to Bolton. It was built by the proprietors of the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Navigation and Railway Company who had in 183 ...
line and the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal. In 1896 Agecroft Nos 1 & 2 pits employed 371 underground and 111 surface workers while Agecroft Nos 3 & 4 employed 15 underground and 39 on the surface. In 1923 Nos 1 and 2 pits employed 272 workers and Nos 3 and 4 a total of 371. Floor upheaval on 4 November 1926 resulted in the deaths of six miners. Andrew Knowles and Sons was merged into
Manchester Collieries Manchester Collieries was a coal mining company with headquarters in Walkden formed from a group of independent companies operating on the Manchester Coalfield in 1929. The Mining Industry Act of 1926 attempted to stem the post-war decline in coal ...
in 1929 and Nos 1 and 2 pits closed the following year. Nos 3 and 4 pits closed in July 1932 but the shafts were retained for pumping to drain nearby collieries.


Second colliery (1960–1991)

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the
National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "v ...
(NCB), aware that coal reserves in its collieries were becoming exhausted, looked at re-opening Agecroft. The NCB carried out deephole-boring in July 1951. In total seven boreholes were drilled; the deepest to 3,790 feet (1,155 metres). In early 1953 it was deduced that there was an estimated 80 million tonnes of workable coal in seams varying from 2 ft 2½ in to 7 ft 0 in (68 cm to 213 cm) in thickness. Agecroft Colliery was redeveloped by the NCB in the 1950s reusing No 3 and No 4 shafts and sinking a new shaft. It cost £9 million to realign and restructure the pit. The colliery was situated between Agecroft Road (A6044), Dell Avenue and the Manchester to Bolton railway line. The old Nos 3 and 4
shafts ''Shafts'' was an English feminist magazine produced by Margaret Sibthorp from 1892 until 1899. Initially published weekly and priced at one penny, its themes included votes for women, women's education, and radical attitudes towards vivisection, ...
were reused and a new No 5 shaft sunk (2,000 feet in depth, 24 feet in diameter) for coal winding using a Koepe-type winding tower. A tunnelling programme commenced in August 1957 and 11,000 yards of tunnel was driven to allow for development of initial output. New surface buildings were built and the colliery was substantially complete by 1960. The first coal winding began in August 1960.


Disaster of 1958

In 1958, while construction workers were sinking shafts, an underground explosion killed one man and injured twelve, trapping them at the bottom of the shaft. The accident was attributed to a misunderstanding in signalling, when men at the top mistakenly believed that the men at the bottom had left the pit and commenced demolition sending tonnes of rock and debris down the shaf


Final years of operation

Some workers at the pit participated in the UK miners' strike (1984-1985), miners' strike in 1984–85. The colliery closed in March 1991 and demolition began later that year.


Agecroft Power Station

The colliery's main customer was the
Central Electricity Generating Board The Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) was responsible for electricity generation, transmission and bulk sales in England and Wales from 1958 until privatisation of the electricity industry in the 1990s. It was established on 1 Januar ...
’s
Agecroft Power Station Agecroft power station was a coal-fired power station between the eastern bank of the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal and the western bank of the River Irwell at Pendlebury, near Manchester, England. It operated between 1925 and 1993, and was ...
close to the
River Irwell The River Irwell ( ) is a tributary of the River Mersey in north west England. It rises at Irwell Springs on Deerplay Moor, approximately north of Bacup and flows southwards for to meet the Mersey near Irlam. The Irwell marks the boundary be ...
. Coal was transported directly to the power station via an enclosed conveyor belt on a bridge over Agecroft Road (A6044). Some coal was moved by merry-go-round coal hopper trains shuttling between coal mines and the power station. Its closure was announced in November 1992 and demolition on the site commenced in 1993 culminating in the destruction of its four
cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and ...
s in May 1994.


Redevelopment

In the late 1990s, a business enterprise park opened on the colliery site. Much of the land remains unused. An international railfreight terminal was planned next to the Manchester to Bolton railway line but, though a spur line was built, the development did not materialise. A housing development has been built on Agecroft Road on the Thermalite factory site and a
prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correc ...
, HMP Forest Bank and Youth Offenders' Institute, built close to the power station site. The land has been landscaped, and footpaths constructed to encourage recreational use. Swinton RLFC plans to build a 6,000-seat
stadium A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...
on land immediately east of the
Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal The Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal is a disused canal in Greater Manchester, England, built to link Bolton and Bury with Manchester. The canal, when fully opened, was long. It was accessed via a junction with the River Irwell in Salford. ...
between Agecroft Road and the prison.


See also

*
List of mining disasters in Lancashire This is a list of mining accidents in the historic county of Lancashire at which five or more people were killed. Mining deaths have occurred wherever coal has been mined across the Lancashire Coalfield. The earliest deaths were recorded in par ...
*
Glossary of coal mining terminology This is a partial glossary of coal mining terminology commonly used in the coalfields of the United Kingdom. Some words were in use throughout the coalfields, some are historic and some are local to the different British coalfields. A Adit :An ...


References

Notes Bibliography * * * *


External links



"Mine Photos - Agecroft Colliery", retrieved 4 July 2006 * "BBC News - The British Landscape" - A before and after comparison using images from 1983 and the modern day (image
"1"

"2""9"

"10"
, all retrieved 4 July 2006.

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20110722095311/http://www.wcml.org.uk/contents/protests-politics-and-campaigning-for-change/pit-and-factory-papers/agecroft-mine-salford/Working Class Movement Library {{Authority control Demolished buildings and structures in Greater Manchester Irwell Valley Underground mines in England Coal mines in Lancashire