Mosley Common Colliery 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 fro ...

originally owned by the Bridgewater Trustees 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 beg ...

after 1866 in

Mosley Common Mosley Common is a suburb of Tyldesley at the far-eastern edge of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester, England. Historically part of Lancashire, it was anciently a hamlet in the east of the township of Tyldesley cum Shakerley, ...

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tamesid ...

, then in the historic county of

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a Historic counties of England, historic county, Ceremonial County, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significa ...

, England. The colliery eventually had five shafts and became the largest colliery 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 f ...

with access to around 270 million tons of coal under the Permian rocks to the south.

History

In 1862 work started at Mosley Common to sink three shafts to a depth of 500 yards in an area where coal had been mined for some time. The old workings were originally called Stonehouse Pits but the new colliery was sunk to access the deeper seams earlier mining had not reached. The sinking of the 12 feet diameter No 1 shaft encountered much water and massive pumps installed from John Musgrave & Sons in Bolton who also built the

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 ...

which survived until 1964.Production started in 1868 from the

Crombouke 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 begi ...

. Some of the first miners came from other Bridgewater Trustees pits whose coal reserves were becoming exhausted. No 2 pit was sunk to 535 yards. The shaft at No 4 pit was 18 feet 6 inches in diameter was sunk to the Trencherbone mine at 602 yards in 1881. Its winding engine was a product of the Haigh Foundry and it had a steel lattice

headframe A headframe (also known as a gallows frame, winding tower, hoist frame,Ernst, Dr.-Ing. Richard (1989). ''Wörterbuch der Industriellen Technik'' (5th ed.). Wiesbaden: Oscar Brandstetter, 1989. pit frame, shafthead frame, headgear, headstock o ...

. This shaft was deepened to 1,000 yards and a Koepe tower winder was built in 1961. The upcast ventilation shaft was No 3 pit sunk to 535 yards, it had a winding engine for winding men not coal. An electric power generating house was built in 1915 and a tall chimney for the boiler plant built in 1916. The Lancashire boilers were supplied by Galloways. In 1923 the Mosley Common, Nos 1, 2 and 5 pits employed 1,338 underground and 198 surface workers while Nos 3 and 4 pits employed 951 underground and 143 above ground. 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 when Bridgewater Collieries joined the company. By 1933 while part of Manchester Collieries the combined total for the pits was 1,729 underground and 489 on the surface rising to 1,711 and 531 in 1940. In 1947, at nationalisation, Mosley Common Nos 1 & 2 pits employed 978 underground and 406 surface workers while No 4 pit employed a further 853 underground and 221 on the surface. Mosley Common Colliery was one of the country's largest and most modern pits after refurbishment and development work by 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 ...

completed in 1962. It was turned into a "superpit" at a cost of £7.5 million and employed 3000 workers. The colliery closed in 1968 after being set impossible production targets though its coal reserves had not been exhausted. The site was cleared by 1974.

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* * * {{coord, 53.508, -2.417, display=title, region:GB_type:landmark Coal mines in Lancashire Underground mines in England Tyldesley

History

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