Mining and the Bridgewater Canal

The picture on the left shows the only surviving pithead in the historic county of Lancashire. It is the disused colliery at Astley Green, a couple of miles to the west of Boothstown, which is now a steam museum. The winding gear presents a reminder of the industry which dominated the locality for hundreds of years until very recently. Evidence of coal mining around Boothstown dates to the 14th century, and leases for coal extraction are evident from around 1500. During the 17th century, extraction of coal was primarily from shallow, or open-cast mines, known as Bell Pits, though techniques for deeper mining continued to be developed. The chief hazards to be overcome were gases (necessitating improved ventilation) and water. From 1729 a drainage sough was constructed from Walkden to Worsley; it was originally 1,100 yards long, of which 600 yards were underground, and was later extended.

Increasing demand for coal from the growing city of Manchester required more efficient means of production and transportation. In response, Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, the famous Canal Duke, commissioned the building of the Bridgewater Canal from Booth's Bank to Worsley, and on to Manchester. The Canal Act was passed in 1759, and the canal into Manchester was operational by 1765. It is regarded as an 18th century masterpiece, and was engineered first by John Gilbert, then by James Brindley.

The picture to the right shows the Bridgewater Canal at Worsley. The distinctive orange colour of the water is not from pollution, but is caused by iron salts in the local rock, leached out by the network of underground canals which linked the collieries to the canal. By 1776 the Bridgewater Canal was extended to the River Mersey at Runcorn, thus linking Manchester with Liverpool by waterway, and in 1795 an Act was passed allowing the canal to be extended westwards to Leigh. (Work was undertaken in 2004 to build a filtration plant to 'clean up' the canal. The distinctive orange colouring will become a thing of the past.)

The construction of an underground canal, or navigable level, was also begun in 1759. The entrance to the level was by the Bridgewater Canal in Worsley village, and the tunnel extended north towards Walkden, with further tunnels along the coal seams being constructed at right angles to the main level. New pits were sunk to meet the navigable level, which enabled coal to be mined and carried underground by boat to the main canal. In addition, the level provided a means of drainage, and a source of water for the Bridgewater Canal. Further local coal rights were acquired by the Duke of Bridgewater beyond his own estate, such as those agreed with Mr. Clowes of Booth's Hall in 1789.

The coal seam running from Boothstown to Worsley is called the Four Feet Seam, and it was exploited because of its proximity to the canal. For example, the pit at Abbot's Fold was linked to the canal by horse-tramway by 1764. The tramway extended one and a quarter miles from Hilton Lane, crossing Newearth Road at Mather Fold and running south to the canal at Boothstown. In the 1840s it was extended to serve the Ellenbrook pits.

The picture on the left, from 1863, shows the means by which the wagons operated. The tramway was gravity driven; the full wagons, with a horse and brakesman on board, rolled down to the canal; after unloading, the empty wagon was pulled by the horse back up to the pit. It crossed Newearth Road at Ellenbrook where, from 1862, a manually operated traffic-light used red and white lamps to tell pedestrians and horse-drawn traffic whether the level crossing was clear - it was the pedestrian and horse traffic which had to stop as the trams rumbled on. Was this the first traffic-light in the world?

The engineering feat of constructing fifty miles of underground canals from Worsley was also undertaken in Boothstown with the construction of the Chaddock Level, which extended over 6,000 yards from the Bridgewater Canal, south of Boothstown, to the Chaddock colliery, and beyond to the Queen Anne pit (which operated from 1810 to 1820) and the Henfold pit. The Chaddock Level was used to transport coal during the 19th century, and though precise dates of construction and disuse are unknown, the keystone on the entrance is dated 1816.

After 1841 women, and children under 12, were no longer required to work underground in Worsley pits. Women still worked above ground, however, and the picture above shows women from a local pit head (Gibfield in Atherton) in 1905.

The 1848 map of the village suggests that Chaddock Colliery was the main pit, with the entrance to the Chaddock Level shown on the canal. Other coal pits are shown at Abbot's Farm and Mosley Common, originally called Stonehouse Pits. The Abbot's Fold and Chaddock (closed 1868) pits have disappeared on the 1894 map, by which time the Mosley Common colliery, with deep pits sunk in the 1860s, covered a much larger area, and had its own railway link to the canal.

In 1864 an LNWR main railway line was built from Worsley to Wigan, and became a means of distributing local coal. The tramways were replaced by standard gauge steam railways which connected the LNWR mainline and the canal, where the basin at Booth's Bank was constructed for unloading coal. The use of the main navigable level for transporting coal thus ended in 1887, though it continued to provide a drainage function.

The picture to the right, possibly from the 1950s, shows the coal chute at the canal basin, used to load the waiting boats. The canal was also used for other commercial traffic, including clay from local pits.

Pictured left are workers at the Boothstown canal basin in 1895 roasting a lamb given to them by Mr. Simpson, the village butcher, when the canal froze over and made work impossible; Mr. Simpson is standing with his hands in his jacket pockets, to the right of the roast.

In 1921, the 4th Earl of Ellesmere founded the Bridgewater Collieries and Bridgewater Wharves companies, separating these interests from his main estate to protect against death duties, taxation and possible fragmentation of the estate arising from any future nationalisation of the mines. (The mines had been government-managed from the 1914-1919 war until they were returned to mine owners in 1921.) In 1923, the Collieries and Wharves were sold with the estate to the new Bridgewater Estates Ltd., of which they became subsidiary companies. In 1924 the first local subsidence problem occurred when the collapse of a mine shaft damaged a house in Boothstown. Following several years of recession and poor industrial relations, a group of local mining companies, including Bridgewater Collieries and Wharves, merged to form Manchester Collieries Ltd. in 1929, and Bridgewater Estates Ltd. gave up its shareholding in its two former subsidiaries.

Mosley Common employed over 2,000 by 1919, and became part of the Manchester Collieries company in 1929, before the take over by the National Coal Board in 1947. The picture, left, shows Mosley Common colliery at its peak in 1956; St. Mary's Church, Ellenbrook can be seen at the bottom of the picture.

The picture, right, shows a locomotive underground at Mosley Common, at around the same time. By the late 1950s, the colliery employed 3,000, and was among the largest and most modern pits in the country. However it was closed in 1968 without having been exhausted, and the site was cleared by 1974.

There is more information about Mosley Common Colliery on the New Manchester and Mosley Common page of this Web site.

Also in 1968, Yates's textile mill, which had dominated the village centre since 1874, was closed down, and was not demolished until the 1980s, prior to housing being built on the site either side of the culverted Stirrup Brook.

The picture to the left shows a train on the mineral railway on the level crossing near Vicar's Hall Bridge in 1963. Some half a million tons of coal were still carried annually on the canal in the late 1950s, serving the power station and industry in Trafford Park. But the last coal was carried in 1970, and commercial traffic ended in 1974. With the closure of the remainder of the pits in the Lancashire coalfield, the Mines Rescue Station, built in 1933 on Ellenbrook Road, was closed in the 1990s, and the distinctive yellow rescue vehicles were no longer to be seen. The building is now used as works premises.

The transformation of the area, particularly along the Bridgewater Canal, following the demise of the coal industry is described on the page After Coal.

Links

There is more information about Mosley Common Colliery on the New Manchester and Mosley Common page of this Web site.

Alan Davies has an extensive resource on the mining industry in Lancashire and the rest of Britain at: http://www.coalpits.co.uk.

The Astley Green Colliery web site, maintained by Richard Fairhurst, is at: http://astleygreen.freeservers.com/intro.htm.