Pendlebury Colliery, usually called Wheatsheaf Colliery after the adjacent
public house
A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and wa ...
, 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 ...
operating 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 ...
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 ...
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 Lancash ...
, England.
The colliery, sunk in 1846, was owned 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 ...
and had two ten foot diameter shafts 24 yards apart.>
The colliery originally had pitch pine timber headgear and a
winding engine
A winding engine is a stationary engine used to control a cable, for example to power a mining hoist at a pit head. Electric hoist controllers have replaced proper winding engines in modern mining, but use electric motors that are also tradit ...
supplied by
John Musgrave & Sons
John Musgrave & Sons was a company that manufactured stationary steam engines. It was founded in 1839 by John Musgrave and his son, Joseph, at the Globe Ironworks, in Bolton, historically in Lancashire, England.
In 1854 the company supplied a ...
of Bolton that operated until 1944.
The colliery was ventilated by furnace until the 20th century when ventilation fans were installed.
Wrought iron
Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" ...
boilers to raise steam for powering pumps, air compressors and haulage were originally sited near the bottom of No.2 shaft, the upcast shaft. The shaft bottom was reached at 1,775 feet. The colliery accessed several coal seams including the
Rams
In engineering, RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability and safety)Crumbouke and Doe mines.
In 1896 the colliery employed 640 men underground and 165 surface workers while in 1923 there were 563 underground and 172 surface workers.
The colliery 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 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 "ve ...
in 1947. The colliery was connected by tunnel to Newtown Colliery in 1957 but closed in June 1961.
The colliery was situated on the north-east side of Bolton Road (A666), Pendlebury between Carrington Street and City Walk on what is now the Wheatsheaf Industrial Estate.