Photo-a-Day  (Tuesday, 5th August, 2025)

No doubt something to do with old mine workings Dennis. Crawford Avenue and Balcarries Road Sit on top of a pit waste from Crawford pit. There must be many tunnels under Aspull.

What would cause an underground fire, houses built on reclaimed mining ground ? It beats me that planning is still given for dwellings to be erected on flood plains & near eroding cliffs etc.
The cliffs here are eroding at a metre a year & still they build.
Interesting pic Dennis, if you ever find out what is causing the upheavel, lets us know !

Old pit shafts I presume Dennis.

That's scary! I wonder how they found out the fire was happening?

I believe it started burning underground on Saturday night a few weeks ago. What you see was once overgrow with trees, you couldn't see the houses. The fire brigade worked in shifts round the clock , and on standby for a while to keep it under control , and remained on site to assist the contractors .
The contractors arrived with machines to remove all the trees ,and dig it out the pit waste , and take it away, a few houses on Balcarres were evacuated to a hotel for safety, I don't know how many .
Like my friend Walter says there's a lot of pit waste in that area, I don't know what the situation at the moment. Good photo Dennis.

There are new houses built on the old Golborne pit land. Frightening.
And possibly many more up and down the Country. Ask the question, are we safe.

Should be good news for anyone in Aspull Dennis with a Geothermal Heat Pump!

The dynamics of those underground fires can be difficult to understand.

Anyone read 'The Unfortunate Colliery'?

It was one of the Winstanley Pits that was devastated by an underground fire.

They completely filled the workings with water, left it for a lengthy period, (Don't recall precisely how long) But when they pumped it out.... You've guessed: the fire continued to burn! They infilled, with similar lack of success.

I do not recall where, but I have read of such things continuing to burn for decades.

It will get worse with the continuing need for more houses. It happened where I live with new houses built and the owners all had to move out. The houses were empty for decades until the problem was solved. It may have been an underground problem, however, not sure if it was due to fire but it certainly had something to do with old mine workings. We pay fees for searches when buying a house but what good is that when this happens?

There’s still coal underground so there’ll always be fires due to all the compressed trees underground from millions of years ago. (and I’m no Geologist..)

Sue there are no houses built on the old Golborne pit land they are all industrial units

Did you know that throughout August Andy Burnham (Pease Be Upon Him) has decreed that you can use your bus pass on BeeNetwork before 09:30 in the morning during the week. So if you want to get into Aspull early to avoid the crowds now is the time to do it.

I thought surely not building houses there when passing last week.You would think they would use Carl Roberts from Haigh Road instead of Fox’s from Blackpool to deliver stone.

I remember a miss Jackson from Balcarras when working at Harvey’s late sixties.

It’s not unusual for Pit waste to spontaneously combust like this. Many years ago a section of the Wutchie caught fire and burned for some time before it was dug out. It also happened in Standish and that was the cause of many complaints for years.

Dennis is kidding us and it's a mock up using his old Dinky toy models, compare the bulldozer and truck with the pencil.
Seriously though, we all know these fires can smoulder for years, and folks will recall what Bradley Lane was like, I can also remember a pit slag heap in the 1960s on fire and smoking, but it was just left, and a coal seam in China is said to have been burning for over 2,000 years, despite water being poured day and night on the fire, though the firemen are from the same family with jobs being handed down over the generations, so that may account for the fire burning for so long.

They may well make another blockbuster film about it:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/The_Day_the_Earth_Caught_Fire_%28movie_poster%29.jpg

There was a tale about a tramp who dug into the side of a dirt hill in the winter months to keep warm but died from the gases given off by the fire

Yes, it was not unusual for the Three Sisters to burn, especially the black one. Their being conical shaped then made them look much like a volcano. An appearance which was even more pronounced when they were snow-covered.

Traces of sulphur existed in the waste, which easily ignited. Sunlight refracted in a raindrop is sufficient to ignite rock sulphur.

A fire can't burn without oxygen. Cut the oxygen and the fire goes out

Alright buildings then, old deputy...same difference.

I too would have thought that owd deputy, but it depends on what is present, apparently there's no oxygen on the Sun, but thankfully that still burns and keeping us warm, as explained here:
https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/can-fire-occur-non-oxygenated-reaction.html

Well I never who would have thought that the scenic village of Aspull would have been built on pit rubbish.
I recall that a few years ago, the scenic village of Standish had a similar problem, and it had been burning for years. They had to keep digging out the rubbish, and the stench was terrible.