Burnley Coalfield


The Burnley Coalfield is the most northerly portion of the Lancashire Coalfield. Surrounding Burnley, Nelson, Blackburn and Accrington, it is separated from the larger southern part by an area of Millstone Grit that forms the Rossendale anticline. Occupying a syncline, it stretches from Blackburn past Colne to the Yorkshire border where its eastern flank is the Pennine anticline.

Geography and geology

The Burnley Coalfield which surrounds Burnley, Nelson, Blackburn and Accrington is the most northerly portion of the Lancashire Coalfield. The Rossendale anticline, an area of Millstone Grit, separates it from the larger southern part of the coalfield. Occupying a syncline bounded by the Pendle monocline to the north, the coalfield stretches from Blackburn, eastwards past Colne to the Pennine anticline on the border with Yorkshire.
The coalfield's seams are the Westphalian Coal Measures of the Carboniferous period, laid down from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests more than 300 million years ago but here, only the Lower Coal Measures remain. Within the coalfield, the dip in the strata varies from shallow to the south and west but steeper where there are faults. Named faults include the Deerplay Fault in the middle of the district which is associated with a line to west where the Lower Mountain and Upper Foot mines combine to form the Union mine. The Cliviger Valley Fault has a throw of up to in the Cliviger valley. The intersecting Theiveley Lead Mine and nearby Hameldon Faults are some of a smaller number of easterly aligned structures which separate the coalfield from the horizontal strata of Rossendale. Other unnamed faults include one between Altham and Huncoat which is considered to be the boundary between the Burnley and Accrington district.
Around the district, 19 coal seams, of varying thickness were exploited over time. The most important were the Lower/Union and Upper Mountain, Dandy, King and Arley mines. Seams were generally less than 1.5 metres in thickness, frequently less. One notable exception occurs in the Calder Valley near Gawthorpe Hall, where as a result of the absence of the Tim Bobbin Rock which usually separates the King and Fulledge Thin mines, the Padiham Thick mine is up to 5.3 metres thick. Coal extracted from the Arley, Upper and Lower Mountain mines was used to produce high grade metallurgical coke which was in high demand for industry, whereas coal from the Union/Upper Foot mines had a high sulphur content making it unsuitable for making coke.
The Union mine is contaminated with in-seam concretions known locally as coal balls or bobbers, spherical concretions, composed of limestone measuring from 0.1 to 1.0 metre in diameter that posed hazards for mining. They were largely responsible for the closure of Bank Hall Colliery, the area's largest and deepest pit.

History

Coal was exploited in the 13th century at Trawden near Colne where receipts are mentioned in a rent roll from 1295. Coal was also bought at Cliviger. The first coals were extracted at the outcrops before shaft and adit mining were adopted. The coal industry grew in the 16th and 17th centuries, developing from manorial tenants who dug coal for their own use into fixed term leases in return for rent. Coal was mined all around Burnley, mostly from shafts. By 1800, more than a dozen pits had been sunk in central Burnley.
The arrival of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was a catalyst for industrialisation as was the coming of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway line through Burnley to Colne in 1848. In the 1840s some old small pits such as Cleggs Pit and Habergham closed and larger collieries were sunk at Bank House Colliery, Whittlefield Colliery and the old Fulledge Colliery was redeveloped and linked by a tramway to canal. Tramways came into more common use in the 1880s and several collieries in the town were linked by the system.
Several collieries were nationalised under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946 on vesting day, 1 January 1947. After the 1950s much of the area was opencasted. Coal was opencast at Helm, Royal Zone, Gawthorpe Hall and Tipping Hill. Hill Top Colliery, a very small drift mine near Bacup, was still producing small amounts of coal in 2010.

Collieries

Accrington district