Great Boys Colliery

Great Boys Colliery was a coal mine operating on the Manchester Coalfield in the second half of the 19th century in Tyldesley, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. It was sunk on Great Boys farm, which in 1778 was described as a "messuage with eight Cheshire acres of land" on the north side of Sale Lane west of the Colliers Arms public house.[1] It was owned by William Atkin[2] and sold in 1855 to mineowners, John Fletcher of Bolton and Samuel Scowcroft. By 1869 their partnership was dissolved and the company became John Fletcher and Sons in 1877. Shafts were sunk for a colliery on Pear Tree Farm on the corner of Mort Lane and Sale Lane which appear in the 1867 Mines Lists and became part of Great Boys Colliery. Fletcher and Schofield were granted permission to construct a mineral railway to join the London and North Western Railway's Tyldesley Loopline in 1868 but there is no evidence that it was built. The colliery closed before 1885.[3] The colliery accessed the Brassey mine (coal seam) at about 170 yards and the Six Foot mine at 182 yards.[4] The deeper coal seams were accessed by New Lester Colliery.[1]

The Colliers Arms

The offices and lamproom for the pit occupied the building that is now the Colliers Arms public house, on Sale Lane.[5]

Disaster

On 6 March 1877 eight men died in an explosion of firedamp at the colliery. A further 100 men and boys who were in the mine were burned but survived the explosion.[4]

See also

References

Citations
  1. Lunn 1953, p. 97
  2. "List of coal mines in Lancashire in the year 1854". communigate.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2011-05-15. Retrieved 2010-10-22.
  3. Townley et al. 1995, p. 313
  4. Great Boys Colliery Disaster (PDF), The Coalmining History Research Centre, p. 9, archived from the original (PDF) on 23 June 2016, retrieved 23 June 2017
  5. Preece 1981, p. 123

Bibliography
  • Lunn, John (1953), A Short History of the Township of Tyldesley, Tyldesley Urban District Council
  • Preece, Geoff; Ellis, Peter (1981), Coalmining, a handbook to the History of Coalmining Gallery, Salford Museum of Mining, City of Salford Cultural Services
  • Townley, C. H. A.; Appleton, C. A.; Smith, F. D.; Peden, J. A. (1995), The Industrial railways of Bolton, Bury and the Manchester Coalfield, Part Two, The Manchester Coalfield, Runpast, ISBN 1-870754-32-8

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