Coke ovens

I was driving along the M62 past Milnrow as I have done many times before, only this time I spotted something. On approaching a bridge carrying a farm lane over the motorway I looked up and spotted a bank of coke ovens on the hillside. How on earth had I managed to miss those for so many years?

Moving on a couple of weeks I was back for a closer look at this row of beehive ovens built into the hillside. The stone facing has long been removed for re-use but the back half of the kilns remains. My first thought was that they were associated with Tunshill Colliery which was a short distance downhill from here, but after a bit of research I reckon they were built to use coal drawn from the Tunshill Hey Collieries operated on the north-east side of the hill in the later nineteenth century by Benjamin Chadwick and the Executors of Alfred Wild who also seem to have been involved with the colliery and coke ovens at Schofield Hall, of which more anon. The coal was brought through the hill from Tunshill Hey workings and emerged from a tramming level close to the ovens. By producing the coke here it was closer to the markets of Oldham and Rochdale and may even have been sent down the tramroad linking Tunshill Colliery with Butterworth Hall Pit in Milnrow itself.