The Clifton and Kersley Coal Company or Clifton and Kearsley Coal Company was a coal mining company that operated in

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 ...

and

Kearsley Kearsley ( ) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England. The population at the 2011 census was 14,212. Historically part of Lancashire, it lies northwest of Manchester, southwest of Bury and south of Bolt ...

on the south side of the

Irwell Valley The Irwell Valley in North West England extends from the Forest of Rossendale through the cities of Salford and Manchester. The River Irwell runs through the valley, along with the River Croal. Geology Shallow seas covered most of south-east La ...

, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. Its collieries exploited the

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 ...

mines (seams) 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 ...

in 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 ...

. Pits had been sunk in the 1730s and in the 1740s John Heathcote who owned the pits employed Matthew Fletcher. The Fletchers had extensive interests in coal mining in the area and, by the 1750s, Fletcher owned the collieries. The Clifton and Kersley Coal Company which took over collieries owned by the Fletchers was started by Edward and Alfred Pilkington in 1867. The company owned Newtown and Wet Earth Collieries in Clifton, Outwood Colliery in Outwood and Little Hey. Manor, Scowcrofts and Spindle Point Collieries in Kearsley.

Astley Green Colliery Astley Green Colliery was a coal mine in Astley, Greater Manchester, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. It was the last colliery to be sunk in Astley. Sinking commenced in 1908 by the Pilkington Colliery Company, a subsidiary o ...

in Astley opened in 1912. In 1896 the company employed 2,729 workers, 2,146 of them underground while in 1923 it employed 4,300 workers, nearly 2,000 of them at its newest colliery Astley Green. In 1929 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 ...

References

Notes Bibliography * * * Mining in Lancashire Underground mines in England Defunct mining companies of the United Kingdom {{UK-company-stub