Astley Green Colliery Astley · Greater Manchester · England

Astley Green Colliery was founded in 1908 by the Pilkington Colliery Company, a subsidiary of the Clifton and Kersley Coal Company, to exploit deep coal seams of the Manchester Coalfield beneath the peat bog known as Chat Moss. The coal seams were very deep and overlain by approximately 30 metres of wet and unstable ground, making shaft sinking a costly and technically demanding proposition; a paper on the sinking of the shaft was subsequently presented to the Institute of Mining Engineers. On Thursday 7 May 1908 work began on sinking what became known as No. 1 shaft. For the first time in Britain a method known as the drop shaft was used, in which forged iron rings with a cutting shoe at the bottom were forced into the unstable ground using thirteen hydraulic jacks; the excavated material was removed from within the shield and the process repeated until the shaft reached stable strata at a depth of 30 metres. A large masonry thrust pillar was constructed to resist the hydraulic jack forces; this pillar now supports the headgear. Below 30 metres, further tubbing continued until a depth of 122 metres was reached, after which the shaft was lined with brick. The 6.4-metre-diameter No. 1 shaft reached pit bottom at 814 metres without loss of life in 1912. The Crombouke and Rams coal measures were intersected by the sinkings. Firedamp was encountered in the new workings and presented ventilation challenges.

The No. 1 shaft headgear was built by Head Wrightson of Stockton-on-Tees and completed by 1912. It is a lattice steel riveted structure standing nearly 30 metres high, with two winding pulleys of 6.4 metres in diameter; the whole structure weighs 122 tonnes. The winding engine installed at No. 1 pit in 1912 was a twin tandem compound 3,300 horsepower engine built by Yates and Thom of Blackburn, and was the largest winding engine ever used on the Lancashire Coalfield. It was driven by four steam cylinders in a twin tandem compound arrangement connected to a bicylindro-conical drum; at full capacity it was able to haul just over eight tonnes of coal from a depth of 801 metres every two minutes. Yates and Thom also supplied 16 Lancashire boilers for the colliery. A smaller cross compound winding engine for No. 2 pit was also built by Yates and Thom; delivery was delayed by the First World War and it was not operational until 1919. No. 2 shaft headgear was of lighter construction using rolled steel girders, reflecting its principal duty of transporting men and materials.

Coal was despatched from Astley Green by rail to the Manchester to Liverpool mainline at Astley Junction and by water via the Bridgewater Canal; later the pit supplied coal to power stations at Trafford and Stretford. In 1923 the colliery employed 1,524 men underground and 436 surface workers, rising to 1,631 underground and 492 surface workers by 1933. Women, known as pit brow lasses, sorted coal on the screens at Astley Green and were employed there until the mid-1950s. In 1928 Astley Green was amalgamated with other local collieries to form Manchester Collieries.

On 6 June 1939 a firedamp explosion occurred at the colliery. Men had been fighting an underground fire more than a mile from the pit bottom; despite rescue efforts from Boothstown Mines Rescue Station, further explosions drove back the rescuers and five men, including the pit manager, died and four were injured. The colliery was employing approximately 2,000 men at the time of the accident. After nationalisation in 1947 the mine was modernised and both shafts wound coal; after nationalisation No. 2 shaft wound coal only from the Worsley Four Feet Seam at a depth of 263 metres, while No. 1 shaft continued to work the deeper seams. From 1947 mine cars of three-tonne capacity replaced the earlier tubs. Skip winding was also installed on No. 2 shaft in the post-nationalisation period.

By the late 1960s production targets were increasingly hard to meet. On 3 April 1970 the last load of coal was hauled up and the colliery was classified as uneconomic and closed. Demolition began in the same year. The No. 2 shaft headgear and associated buildings were demolished. However, pressure from Lancashire County Council, local museums, and archaeologists brought demolition to a halt, and the No. 1 shaft headgear, winding engine, internal travelling crane, and engine house were preserved in place. The remainder of the site was mothballed.

In 1983 the Red Rose Steam Society took a lease on the site and began work on saving and restoring the winding engine and winding house. The organisation was later renamed the Red Rose Steam Society Ltd, and subsequently the Lancashire Mining Museum Ltd in 2022. The site now operates as the Lancashire Mining Museum, a registered charity. The winding engine was restored to working order and ran for the first time since the pit's closure in 2013, now operated on compressed air at regular intervals. The No. 1 shaft headgear is the only surviving pit headgear on the Lancashire Coalfield, and the engine house contains the largest surviving steam winding engine used on that coalfield. Both the headgear and engine house are Grade II listed buildings and hold Scheduled Monument status. An English Heritage report has noted the headgear as being at risk of deterioration requiring urgent repair and maintenance. The museum occupies approximately 15 acres and holds a collection of 28 colliery locomotives, described as the largest collection of its type in the United Kingdom.