Post by Minutor on Apr 1, 2014 13:38:06 GMT -5
As a kid in the 1960's I lived in Hindley not far from Leyland Park although my playgrounds were the slag heaps of the defunct Grange Colliery and Grammar Pit and fishing for sticklebacks in the old Grammar Pit reservoirs. I haven't been able to find out much about these mines nor have I located a photograph of them when they were still working (I think they closed before WW2). Little did I know then I would end up working down mines
The picture below is me on top of the main slag heap of Grange Coliery, behind me you can see a shaft surrounded by a brick wall which would have been about 8 feet high. In front of my right knee you can just see the wall surrounding the other shaft. The shafts were open and we used to climb on the wall to look down them, I remember they had cast-iron tubbing as far as the water level. Behind the shafts you can see a low slag heap, this was the "smokey hill" which was still burning some 30 years or more after the mine closed. We used to sit on the smokey hill in winter to warm up! To the east of where I am stood is Leyland Park (it is still there) and beyond that were the slag heaps from the Grammar Pit, these had also been on fire at some point and had also been reworked to recover coal, as a result there were weird shapes of burnt red shale welded together which as kids we used to imagine was another planet. It was also a good area to ride our "fixie" bikes (we had fixies 50 years before London hipsters made them trendy). The two reservoirs I fished in can still be seen on Google Maps although it looks as if they have been drained but all the slag heaps have gone. Other than a hint of broken ground you wouldn't know there had been mines there.
If anyone has any information on these collieries I would be grateful, you will need to copy and paste the Google Maps link
maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=hindley+town&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x487b05fdf5c7a71f:0xfa190b7fd8807d35,Hindley&gl=uk&ei=wAU7U9atNPLK0AWe_YDgAQ&ved=0CKsBELYD
The picture below is me on top of the main slag heap of Grange Coliery, behind me you can see a shaft surrounded by a brick wall which would have been about 8 feet high. In front of my right knee you can just see the wall surrounding the other shaft. The shafts were open and we used to climb on the wall to look down them, I remember they had cast-iron tubbing as far as the water level. Behind the shafts you can see a low slag heap, this was the "smokey hill" which was still burning some 30 years or more after the mine closed. We used to sit on the smokey hill in winter to warm up! To the east of where I am stood is Leyland Park (it is still there) and beyond that were the slag heaps from the Grammar Pit, these had also been on fire at some point and had also been reworked to recover coal, as a result there were weird shapes of burnt red shale welded together which as kids we used to imagine was another planet. It was also a good area to ride our "fixie" bikes (we had fixies 50 years before London hipsters made them trendy). The two reservoirs I fished in can still be seen on Google Maps although it looks as if they have been drained but all the slag heaps have gone. Other than a hint of broken ground you wouldn't know there had been mines there.
If anyone has any information on these collieries I would be grateful, you will need to copy and paste the Google Maps link
maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=hindley+town&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x487b05fdf5c7a71f:0xfa190b7fd8807d35,Hindley&gl=uk&ei=wAU7U9atNPLK0AWe_YDgAQ&ved=0CKsBELYD
