Mining in Burtonwood

Mining

Coal

Early in the 17th Century, Richard Bold was warned for digging coals at Bold and thus endangering the local populace, so no doubt small coal diggings were not usual. Mossess Shaw of Parr who was buried at Burtonwood Chapel on October 29th 1697 was described in the parish register as collier kild in cold pit. Yet, well into the 19th Century commercial exploitation of some of the local coal seams still had not taken place. In 1839 an auction at the Legh Arms in Newton indicates that one coalfield at least was still mere supposition:

For Sale Valuable and Extensive Freehold Estates and Coal Mine...It is supposed that a valuable coalfield extends through the Burtonwood Estates.

Some fifty years later the Collins Green Colliery Company was producing 2,000 tons of coal per day at Collins Green. But as well as the coal there was also the problem of water in considerable quantities in the workings. Such was the size of the water problem that John Slee & Company of Earlestown built a pumping engine to raise it from 96 yards below ground to 20 yards above it, so that it might gravitate towards St Helens where it will supply a large proportion of the town with water of the purist quality. Numerous complaints from areas of St Helens suggest that the water was not as pure as it might have been.

The water, pure or not, nearly put an end to Bold Colliery. In 1875 the machinery for raising the water at Bold was overpowered and after the expenditure of some Ł57,000 the undertaking was abandoned until 1878 when the Collins Green Colliery Company purchased the plant and sank another two shafts. The list of workable and potentially workable seams at Collins Green at this time will ring familar to generations of Lancashire miners: The Four Foot, Yard Seam, Higher and Lower Florida, Ravenhead High and Main, Roger Delph, Little Delph and Rushy Park.

The royalties of these two pits were owned by the executors of D Fairclough and others, from whom they were leased to the Collins Green Company under its chairman, Mr John Mercer of Alston Hall, Preston. The colliery manager was Mr Andrew Jackson. Also owned by the company was a brickworks in Burtonwood where a machine could turn out 10,000 bricks per day, many of which were used in the construction of 154 working men's cottages in the village. These cottages were arranged in three parallel terraced streets and named after one of the parsonages of the Company; Mercer Street, Fairclough Street and Jackson Street, all of which are still standing, though the Mercer Street Water Works, with a 24 feet high water tank over a well sunk into the New Red Sandstone, is now demolished. A social club and bowling green were also provided by the Company and in 1892 the club had 100 members. The Company claimed that it provided a means of recreation and gave interest and employment to the mind, but when Mr Anders of the Bridge Inn was applying for the second time for a full licence in 1898 for his beerhouse, he suggested that the Social Club was a place of drunkenness, but perhaps he was biased.

At the end of the 1920's, the Collins Green Colliery Club, which had existed "over the arch" that spanned the shops at the end of Mercer Street and Fairclough Street since the 1800s, closed down. A great storm had shattered the skylight, sending it crashing down onto the billiard table cracking the slate and soaking the premised. It never reopened after that and several of the younger parishioners, seeing the potential of the property, approached the parish priest, Father Roach, with an idea to use it as a parish club. At first the priest was opposed to the idea of it being a licensed club, but in 1932, it came to fruition with the full blessing of the then parish priest, Father Almond, under the name of Burtonwood Catholic Club. The premises were still owned by the colliery company and the rent of seven shillings a week was stopped out of the wages of the first chairman, Gerry Murray, at Bold Colliery.

The club was, and still is, an important centre for the social life of Burtonwood, but coal with which it was so closely linked, eventually brought about its downfall, in 1956 the arch was demolished due to mining subsidence and after a brief period in the chip shop next door, the club moved to new buildings, constructed with the help of Burtonwood Brewery, next to the site of the old grammar school, (which is now a youth club). Situated scarcely a quarter of a mile away across the fields from the Brewery, it can claim its beer could hardly be fresher! It has however, been called upon to cater to other needs, notably in 1972 when it served as a temporary Mass Centre after the demolition of the old tine church and in 1963 when it served as temporary classrooms during repairs to St Paul's School.

The link between Burtonwood and the coal mines was so strong that whenever there was a dispute in the pits it had a direct and immediate effect upon the village. Sometimes the results were startling as the local press reported on September 3rd 1883: A singular occurrence in connection with the Coal Strike is reported from Burtonwood. The Collins Green Colliery Company are erecting a number of cottages in that village and on Thursday, Thomas Prescott, farmer was taking a load of coals to brick kilns near the new houses when he was met by a gang of colliers who overturned his cart. A crowd of men, women and children, who quickly gathered, helped themselves to the whole of the coals, scarcely a vestige was visible when the police arrived on the scene. Special constables were on duty in the district yesterday to prevent a repetition of the occurrence . Again in 1911 during the Minimum Wage Strike extra police had to be drafted in to control the pickets at Collins Green.

The village was hardly a prosperous community even when the pits were working but at times of stoppages whole families suffered in those pre-Welfare State days. Yet, as in many mining communities, a real sense of solidarity, born of sharing common hardships seems to have existed. The 1926 strike was the time of soup kitchens, set up and funded by goodwill and such voluntary efforts as the several concerts which Jim Cunliffe and his Band played in the Church Hall for the Miners' Soup Kitchen Fund. Unfortunately the difficult geological conditions and the water eventually made coal production uneconomical and Collins Green finally closed in the early 1930's. In the 1980's, Bold Colliery has gone the same way finally breaking the link between Burtonwood and Coal.