The Wigan Coal and Iron Company was formed when collieries 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 ...

owned by John Lancaster were acquired by Lord Lindsay, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, owner of the Haigh Colliery in 1865. The company owned collieries in Haigh,

Aspull Aspull is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester, England. Historically in Lancashire, Aspull, along with Haigh, is surrounded by greenbelt and agricultural land, separated from Westhoughton, on its southeast sid ...

, Standish,

Westhoughton Westhoughton ( ) is a town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, southwest of Bolton, east of Wigan and northwest of Manchester.Blackrod Blackrod is a town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, northeast of Wigan and west of Bolton. At the United Kingdom Census 2011, it had a population of 5,001. Historically part of Lancashire, ...

, Westleigh and St Helens and large furnaces and iron-works near

Wigan Wigan ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, on the River Douglas, Lancashire, River Douglas. The town is midway between the two cities of Manchester, to the south-east, and Liverpool, to the south-west. Bolton lies to the nor ...

and the Manton Colliery in

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

. Collieries belonging the Wigan Coal and Iron Company in 1896 were the Alexandra, Bawkhouse, Bridge, Lindsay and Meadow Pits in Haigh. The largest, the Alexandra Pit employed more than 650 workers and the Lindsay Pits more than 350. The Crawford, Kirkless, Moor and Woodshaw Pits in Aspull employed over 1,000 workers. Eatock Pits in Westhoughton employed 484 underground and 89 surface workers whilst the Hewlett Pits in

Hart Common Hart Common is a village in Westhoughton, in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, lying mainly along the A58 road. History Hart Common was once one of the most rural and least populated hamlets which made up the to ...

employed 981 underground and 182 on the surface. Ladies Lane Colliery in Hindley employed 282 underground and 40 surface workers. The Westleigh Pits were Priestners which employed 387 underground and 70 on the surface, Snapes, and Sovereign which had 180 underground workers and 68 on the surface. The King Coal Pit at Blackrod was a pumping pit, retained to drain the colliery workings. In Standish the company owned the Broomfield, Giants Hall, Gidlow, John, Langtree, Robin Hill, Swire and Taylor Pits. The largest of these was the Langtree Pit with more than 540 employees. Wigan Coal and Iron Company was the biggest colliery owner on the

and in the 1920s employed 9,000 workers. The shafts of

Parsonage Colliery Parsonage Colliery was a coal mine operating on the Lancashire Coalfield in Leigh, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. The colliery, close to the centre of Leigh and the Bolton and Leigh Railway was sunk between 1913 and 1920 by t ...

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 ...

, sunk by the company between 1913 and 1920, were at the time the deepest in Britain. The company operated Bercune pit, an iron ore mine near Dalton in Furness until 1898. In 1930, The Wigan Coal & Iron Co. Ltd and the Pearson & Knowles Coal & Iron Co. Ltd combined their

coal mining 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 ...

operations to establish the Wigan Coal Corporation.

References

Notes Bibliography * {{refend Mining in Lancashire Underground mines in England Defunct mining companies of the United Kingdom Companies based in Wigan