The Astley and Tyldesley Collieries Company formed in 1900 owned
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 ...
s on 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 ...
south of the railway in
Astley and
Tyldesley
Tyldesley () is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester, England. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, it is north of Chat Moss near the foothills of the West Pennine Moors, southeast of Wigan ...
, then in the
historic county of
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.
The company became part of
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 some of its collieries were nationalised in 1947.
Geology
The company's collieries were on a part of 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 ...
whose coal seams were laid down in the
Carboniferous
The Carboniferous ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Permian Period, million years ago. The name ''Carbonifero ...
period, where some easily accessible seams were worked on a small scale before the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, and extensively from the mid-19th century until the middle of the 20th century. The
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 ...
lie above a bed of
Millstone Grit and are interspersed with
sandstone
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...
s,
mudstone
Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from '' shale'' by its lack of fissility (parallel layering).Blatt, H., and R.J. Tracy, 1996, ''Petrology. ...
s,
shale
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...
s, and
fireclay
Fire clay is a range of refractory clays used in the manufacture of ceramics, especially fire brick. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines fire clay very generally as a "mineral aggregate composed of hydrous silicates of alumin ...
s. The most productive seams are in the lower two thirds of the Middle Coal Measures where coal is mined from seams between the
Worsley Four Foot and
Arley mine
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 beg ...
s. The Coal Measures generally dip towards the south and west. Numerous small faults affect the coalfield.
History
In the 1840s, John Darlington leased the mineral rights of land belonging to
Astley Hall and sank a pit, Astley Colliery, which subsequently became the site of
Gin Pit Colliery
Gin Pit was a coal mine operating on the Lancashire Coalfield from the 1840s in Tyldesley, Greater Manchester then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. It exploited the Middle Coal Measures of the Manchester Coalfield and was situated t ...
. It was near other old shafts on Meanley's Farm. Coal had been mined in Astley before this date, on an old enclosure map North Lane was titled the "Coal Road" and later was known as "North Coal Pit Lane".
In 1847 Darlington's company was known as ''Astley and Bedford Collieries'', which had offices at Bedford Lodge in
Bedford, Leigh
Bedford, a suburb of Leigh, Greater Manchester is one of three ancient townships, Bedford, Pennington and Westleigh, that merged in 1875 to form the town of Leigh. Historically, Bedford was in Lancashire.
History Toponymy
Bedford means the "f ...
. Gin Pit's name suggests it, or its predecessor, had
horse driven winding gear and was on the site of even older coal workings. The colliery site was isolated from roads resulting in Darlington building a narrow gauge tramway worked by horses to transport
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when dea ...
from his pit to a basin on the
Bridgewater Canal
The Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh, Greater Manchester, Leigh, in North West England. It was commissioned by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to Manchester. It was ...
at Marsland Green. In 1851 Darlington attempted to sell his colliery, tramroad, cranes and tipplers on the canal to the
Bridgewater Trustees but the operation was eventually sold to Samuel Jackson, a salt merchant and owner of Bedford Colliery or Milner's Pit which he had bought from W. E. Milner around the same time. Jackson's lease was for coal from the Worsley Four Foot mine and he was required to sink two shafts 14 feet in diameter with no workings under
Astley Hall.
A lease of 1857 committed the company to paying the lessors of Astley Hall a minimum annual rent of £1,000 and royalties for the
Bin mine
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 begin ...
of £70 "per foot thick per
Cheshire acre", for the
Crombouke £95, the
Brassey £70, and the
Six Foot
6 is a number, numeral, and glyph.
6 or six may also refer to:
* AD 6, the sixth year of the AD era
* 6 BC, the sixth year before the AD era
* The month of June
Science
* Carbon, the element with atomic number 6
* 6 Hebe, an asteroid
Peop ...
£95. The lease expired in 1896. By the time the Astley Hall estate was sold in 1889, Astley and Tyldesley Collieries had paid a total of £90,526 for these mines and the
Worsley Four Foot mine
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 begin ...
. The deeper mines, the
Seven Feet and the
Trencherbone, were not included in the 1857 lease. These coal seams produced steam coal, household coal and coal for Tyldesley's gasworks.
[ About 500 tons of coal per day was raised from the older pits. The Bedford Colliery closed in 1864 and the company concentrated its operations closer to Gin Pit.
]
Deep pits
The London and North Western Railway
The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the L&NWR was the largest joint stock company in the United Kingdom.
In 1923, it became a constituent of the Lo ...
(LNWR) opened a line from Eccles to Wigan via Tyldesley and the Tyldesley Loopline
The Tyldesley Loopline was part of the London and North Western Railway's Manchester and Wigan Railway line from Eccles to the junction west of Tyldesley station and its continuance south west via Bedford Leigh to Kenyon Junction on the Liver ...
via Leigh
Leigh may refer to:
Places In England
Pronounced :
* Leigh, Greater Manchester, Borough of Wigan
** Leigh (UK Parliament constituency)
* Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
Pronounced :
* Leigh, Dorset
* Leigh, Gloucestershire
* Leigh, Kent
* Leigh, Staf ...
to Kenyon Junction in 1864, providing the impetus for the rapid exploitation of coal reserves to the south of the railway line. Jackson's Astley and Tyldesley Coal and Salt Company sank two shafts at St Georges Colliery, commonly known as Back o' t' Church, to the south of Tyldesley Station. In 1866, Nook Colliery
Nook Colliery was a coal mine operating on the Manchester Coalfield after 1866 in Tyldesley, Greater Manchester, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England.
The colliery's first shaft was sunk to the Rams mine at 455 yards in 1866 by A ...
No 1 Pit, south of Darlington's original Gin Pit was sunk. The company also sank a pit at Cross Hillock south of the Leigh to Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
road in near Higher Green Lane but flooding caused it to close by 1887. The deep collieries replaced the older pits in the area. A new shaft was sunk at Gin Pit in 1872 and a second shaft a year later at Nook Pit. St George's No 3 pit was sunk in 1883 and by 1899 Nook No 3 was in operation.
In about 1888 it was discovered that miners employed by George Green's Tyldesley Coal Company
Tyldesley Coal Company was a coal mining company formed in 1870 in Tyldesley, on the Manchester Coalfield in the historic county of Lancashire, England that had its origins in Yew Tree Colliery, the location for a mining disaster that killed 25 ...
had exceeded the boundaries of the company's lease and extracted coal south of Well Street which belonged to Astley and Tyldesley Collieries. Lengthy litigation followed resulting in a £3,000 fine for Green's company.
The company was a major employer in the area. In 1896 Nook Pit employed 480 men below ground and 125 workers on the surface. Household and manufacturing coal was produced from the Binn and Crumbouke mines. Gin Pit was smaller employing 240 underground workers and 55 on the surface. Gas coal, household and steam coal was mined from the Crumbouke and Six Foot mines. There were 629 underground workers and 137 surface workers at St Georges colliery producing gas coal, household and steam coal from the Brassey, Crumbouke, Six Feet, Seven Feet and Trencherbone mines. The surface workers included women who sorted coal on the screens at the ''pit brow''.
In 1900 the company became the Astley and Tyldesley Collieries Company, and in 1914 Nook No 4 Pit was sunk. Nook became the largest colliery on the Manchester Coalfield. Jackson's Sidings were built by the LNWR and extended to Gin and Nook Pits and, on the early tramroad, a locomotive replaced the horses. The company built its own standard gauge mineral railway which exchanged traffic with the LNWR at Jackson's Sidings southwest of Tyldesley Station.
Coal was wound to the surface at St George's Colliery, Nook and Gin Pit. Coal for Tyldesley was sold from the landsale yard at St George's and there were smaller yards at Nook and Gin Pit but considerable quantities of coal were sent elsewhere by rail from Jackson's Sidings and by barge from Marsland Green to Partington on the Manchester Ship Canal
The Manchester Ship Canal is a inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the river ...
. There was a brickworks at Nook Colliery and sheds and facilities for servicing the industrial locomotives at Gin Pit. Gin Pit had a sawmill and supplied pit props to neighbouring collieries.
As a result of poor economic conditions, Astley and Tyldesley Collieries merged with other local colliery companies in 1929, becoming part of Manchester Collieries, whose Western Division consisted of John Speakman's Bedford Colliery
Bedford Colliery, also known as Wood End Pit, was a coal mine on the Manchester Coalfield in Bedford, Leigh, Lancashire, England. The colliery was owned by John Speakman, who started sinking two shafts on land at Wood End Farm in the northeast pa ...
, Fletcher, Burrows and Company
Fletcher, Burrows and Company was a coal mining company that owned collieries and cotton mills in Atherton, Greater Manchester, England. Gibfield, Howe Bridge and Chanters collieries exploited the coal mines (seams) of the middle coal measures ...
of Atherton and Astley and Tyldesley Collieries.[
On nationalisation in 1947 the coal pits belonging to Manchester Collieries became part of the No 1 Manchester Area of 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 ...
's (NCB) North Western Division. In 1961, the area became the NCB's East Lancashire Area. Gin Pit closed in 1955 and Nook Pit closed in August 1965.
Locomotives
The earliest locomotives that worked on the colliery railway system were a narrow gauge engine that worked the tramway to the Bridgewater Canal possibly named "Gordon" and "Tyldesley", a 6-coupled Manning Wardle
Manning Wardle was a steam locomotive manufacturer based in Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
Precursor companies
The city of Leeds was one of the earliest centres of locomotive building; Matthew Murray built the first commercially s ...
saddle tank locomotive, bought in 1868 and renamed "Jackson" in 1872. A 2-2-0 tender locomotive "Lady Cornwall" was sold to George Peace in 1874 by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway
The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) was a major British railway company before the 1923 Grouping. It was incorporated in 1847 from an amalgamation of several existing railways. It was the third-largest railway system based in northern ...
's works at Miles Platting
Miles Platting is an inner city part of Manchester, England, northeast of Manchester city centre along the
Rochdale Canal and A62 road, bounded by Monsall to the north, Collyhurst to the west, Newton Heath to the east, and Bradford, Holt Tow ...
at a cost of £150 and was later rebuilt as tank engine. In 1875 Manning Wardle supplied "Maden", a 6-coupled tank engine and "Astley" another 6-coupled tank locomotive was bought from Sharp Stewart
Sharp, Stewart and Company was a steam locomotive manufacturer, initially located in Manchester, England. The company was formed in 1843 upon the demise of Sharp, Roberts & Co.. It moved to Glasgow, Scotland, in 1888, eventually amalgamating wit ...
in 1886. The second "Tyldesley", another 6-coupled tank engine was bought in 1894 from Peckett
Peckett and Sons was a locomotive manufacturer at the Atlas Locomotive Works on Deep Pit Road between Fishponds and St. George, Bristol, England.
Fox, Walker and Company
The company began trading in 1864 at the Atlas Engine Works, St. George, ...
with "Jackson" taken in part exchange.
The company bought three 0-6-0 side tank locomotives from Lowca Engineering in Whitehaven
Whitehaven is a town and port on the English north west coast and near to the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England. Historically in Cumberland, it lies by road south-west of Carlisle and to the north of Barrow-in-Furness. It is th ...
, "T.B. Wood" in 1897, "James Lord" in 1903 and "George Peace" in 1906. Two unique 0-8-0 side tank locomotives, "Maden" in 1910 and "Emanuell Clegg" in 1924 were built by Naysmith Wilson at Patricroft
Patricroft is a suburb near Eccles, Greater Manchester, England.
History
Patricroft may derive its name from 'Pear-tree croft', or more likely, 'Patrick's Croft'. In 1836, Scottish engineer James Nasmyth, in partnership with Holbrook Gaskell, bu ...
.
Gin Pit village
Gin Pit Colliery was isolated from both Astley and Tyldesley centres. The company built the terraced houses of Gin Pit village to accommodate the workers. Some of the workforce had migrated from Staffordshire. The village streets, Peace Street, Maden Street and Lord Street, are named from former company directors as were the colliery locomotives. The first houses were built around 1874 and more added by 1909. The Astley and Tyldesley Miners' Welfare Club was built by the Miners Union and remains in the village as a social and sports club.
References
Notes
Footnotes
Bibliography
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{{refend
See also
*List of Collieries in Astley and Tyldesley
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
Mining in Lancashire
Industrial railways in England
Defunct mining companies of the United Kingdom