Astley Green Colliery Museum

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Astley Green Colliery's pithead, viewed from across the Bridgewater Canal

The Astley Green Colliery Museum is run by the Red Rose Steam Society Limited in Astley Green near Tyldesley in Greater Manchester (grid reference SJ70509996). Prior to becoming a museum, the site was a working colliery that had was actively producing coal from 1912 to 1970; it is now protected as a Scheduled Monument.^[1] The museum occupies 15 acres (6 ha). It houses the only surviving pit headgear and engine house in the Lancashire coalfield.

The museum also has a collection of 28 colliery locomotives, the largest such collection in the UK.^[2]

1 History
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

The purpose of Astley Green Colliery was to exploit coal seams 30 metres (98 ft) underneath the peat bog Chat Moss, and was driven by the high demand for coal in the late 19th and early 20th century and the exhaustion of supplies of coal in the Irwell valley.^[3] It was founded in 1908 by the Pilkington Colliery Company and opened in 1912.^[1] In 1928 the colliery was amalgamated with other local collieries to form the Manchester Colleries consortium.^[1] The mine underwent modernisation when the coal industry was nationalised in 1947.^[1] Astley Green Colliery was shut down in 1970 and was subsequently opened to the public as a museum.^[1]