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Littleborough from Cleggswood Hill
Coal Mining in and around Littleborough
Coal has been extracted for some 350 years with the earliest lease found dated to 1582. Many early accessed coal by following visible coal seams into the hills, commonly known as 'drift mines' or 'adits' but more locally as 'Day Eyes' or 'Breast Highs' as seen at Cleggswood. Elsewhere as at Starring and Dearnley plus also at Cleggswood, mine shaft were dug vertically down to the coal seam or even lower seams. A similar process was used somewhat earlier which were known as Bellpits, a technique also used to mine flint deposits.
The demand for coal increased with the development of the mills and their steam engines. As the large efficient Yorkshire and Lancashire mines it became cheaper to import coal with local pictures showing Littleborough full of coal wagons.
The sections below include details of local mines:
StarringÂ
Cleggswood
Hollingworth/Syke
Brearley and Schofield Hall
Littleborough Coal Merchants
Useful external websites include the British Geographical Society and the Coal Authority.Â
See also James Nadin's book on the Rossendale Coalfield. A similar book covers the Oldham Coalfield
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Starring Clay and Coal Mine (see also Starring Pottery)
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This mine was in operation from around the late 1860s until1938. As indicated above, it used a mineshaft to access to coal and clay seams which often had the coal running through them. The clay was so hard it had to be blasted to break it down small enough to be taken to the surface for weathering.
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Pictured below left the mine entrance to the north of the pottery stockyard and below right the underground workings
Pictured left is a diagram of how a Bellpit was worked. Spoil was often from a working pit into a close by abandoned Bellpit. Abandoned Bellpits can often seen in a line across the moor as miners chase the coal seams worked
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