Wigan Album
Mining
5 Comments
Photo: Ron Hunt
Item #: 34101
I’m researching family history my wife and myself and have found your website quite useful and much appreciate your hard work.
I recently came across an older discussion regarding a large number of burials in Upholland church in December 1831 from back in 2011, I decided to look further and came across what seems to be a not very well know pit disaster for that time along with a few newspaper clippings listing the names of these individuals that died.
Regards
Barry Close
I have found a similiar article in the Lancaster Gazette 24 Dec 1831. It doesn't mention the name of the pit like the above article does. I'll keep looking for more information on this colliery I suspect it may have dwarfed in to a bigger concern down the line and became known under a different name. There was a pub named the Old Engine demolished in 2011 I wonder if it took the name from the colliery in question or after a pump that brought the water from the mine: -
https://www.wiganworld.co.uk/album/photo.php?opt=5&id=30752&gallery=Orrell&offset=40
I don't believe you would name a pub after a stationary engine, but perhaps after a coal mine possibly named New Engine Pit that either became known as something else or closed thus making it the Old Engine.
I'll keep looking.
The Orrell colliery associated with, and in close proximity to, the Old Engine public house, was Blundell's 'Fire Engine Colliery'.
Andy, it is on the site somewhere about the name of the Old Engine pub, link here, see comment by Fred Foster at 20:22.
https://www.wiganworld.co.uk/album/photo.php?opt=5&id=30752&gallery=Orrell&offset=40
There's a lock on the Sankey Canal at Parr called Engine Lock. There was a modern pub at the top of the road which ran down to the canal (and Southport and Havannah Collieries), which closed, and was burned down in 2015. I don't know if there had been an older pub by that name. When Newcomen's steam engines started to appear in our coalfields in the early 18th century I'd imagine they attract a lot of attention and excitement - so it's not surprising pubs might be named in their honour. It may even be that the travelling mechanics and tradesmen who erected them and got them going would have lodged near where they were working - and pubs might have been renamed 'The Engine' as a consequence.
I have found mention of this pit in the following work by Anderson: -
https://www.hslc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/116-5-Anderson.pdf
It seemed one of the early mines in the Pemberton Colliery portfolio. Leased to Henry Blundell Hollinshead from the Rev. Thomas Holme. It was one of 14 shafts Blundell was working on the agreement.
One thing the document doesn't refer to is the 1831 disaster. Henry Blundell was born in the same year and was a Colonel in the Grenadiers alongside being a major colliery owner.