Dear Sir
I'm looking to find some photo's of Pollington Pit, Brinsley.

My mother used to sit at the top of the pit hill and dangle her feet down the hole and the times I've heard that story! I would love to be able to print a photo off and frame it for her.

I hope you can help.

Regards
Lisa Deakin

Hi,
Well this is an excellent web-site! I am looking to have contact with any miners who have worked in the Snowdown Colliery in Kent, know as Dante's Inferno. I am aiming to create a memorial sculpture which captures the grit and hard work this job entailed, and I can only really get a good impression of this if I speak to some miners about their memories.

Look forward to hearing from anyone who can help

Kind regards

Carol Blackwood

Hello again In case you've not seen this at all, I wondered if you'd care to have a read through these recollections of working in a coal mine, in Ashton in Makerfield, Lancashire, which is long gone. The pit was called 'Park Colliery', but known locally as 'Stonses', after the owner. It closed in 1957, and the site is now an industrial estate.

Regards,
Jemmy Hanson

As an engineering apprentice with the NCB Central Workshops, Birdwell, in the early 50s I was taken by my fitter who had previously worked underground, to a pit in Barnsley which was a drift mine. We walked some considerable way down the drift, and as we had no safety equipment, I'm sure quite illegally and were able to do so as the drift was fairly well lit.

Have you any idea what pit it might have been?

The only drift mine I know of was Skiers Spring and I know it wasn't that, it was much closer to Barnsley town than Skiers.

Regards,
Barry Yeardley

Ex Rockingham
Ex Barrow
Ex RAF
Ex British Aerospace
Retired.

You could try Ian Winstanley's site - www.cmhrc.co.uk/site/maps/syork_map11.html

Hi Fionn,
I can see from your site that you are not local to the Lancashire coalfield area as some of your comments are a little mixed up.

Pretoria Colliery is not the correct name for that pit. It was, officially, called the 'Hulton Colliery'.

A 'major' mining incident, which occurred in Lancashire in 1878, was the 'Wood Pit' explosion, Haydock. It claimed the lives of over 200 men and boys, mostly from that village itself. Here is a list of victims

Also, please don't be misled by the 'Wigan syndrome'. There were not many coal mines in Wigan.

Why? Because, due to severe strata faulting, there is very little coal under Wigan! The claim that there are over 1000 pit shafts within a five mile radius of Wigan is, probably, true, but if you are to go five miles from Wigan, you're not in Wigan anymore!

You might be surprised to read that, as Wigan is generally regarded as a coal mining town but that is not the case.

Wigan was a 'mill town', which needed coal to fuel the mills and the connection was that some coal companies had offices in Wigan. The coal was taken INTO Wigan from outside towns and villages, not produced in Wigan and exported.

The coal mines which are listed as 'Wigan' pits, the 'Wigan' miners and the 'Wigan' pit brow lasses, were actually not in Wigan at all, but Leigh, Ashton in Makerfield, Pemberton, etc..

Parsonage, Bickershaw were in Leigh, Abram's Maypole Colliery was in Abram, not Wigan. Ashton in Makerfield and Haydock collieries were no where near Wigan, being classed as in the 'St.Helens Coalfield' (even though not in St.Helens either). Hulton Colliery ( Pretoria) was not in Wigan.

Parkside Colliery was in Newton le Willows, near Warrington.

The Wigan press even claimed that the Maypole colliery disaster 'was the worst tragedy in the history of the Lancashire coalfield and one of the blackest chapters in British mining history', which, as we all know, is utter nonsense. You even have the Maypole disaster listed as ..... 'Wigan, Lancashire 18th August 1908.'

That is UNTRUE! In 1908, Abram was in Lancashire, not Wigan.

I hope I haven't bored you, but I feel strongly about each town and village keeping it's identity and hate to see everyplace within a ten mile radius of Wigan, being regarded as Wigan this, that and the other!

Regards,
Jemmy H.

Hi I wondered if you have any details about when the mine was sunk, such as photos or names of people who worked there? We have recently found out that my great, great granddad, who lived in Ireland, fell in love with a girl who's parents sent her to America to stop them seeing each other, he then sold his farm and went to America to find her they came back to England and eloped together and married and settled in Rotherham where he worked to sink the Silverwood pit.

His brother went back to settle in America and all these generations later some American relatives are coming over in August and are interested in the history of the family/ Silverwood colliery I would be most grateful if you have anything that may be of interest.

There are one or two photos of Silverwood pit on the site, see above.
You could also try John Doxey's website. He lives in Australia but is from the area and has a lot of information.

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