Redacre Colliery

Another of those interesting bumps in the ground that need to be researched and explained. This lies in a narrow isthmus of the Parish of Pott Shrigley which bumps up against the three adjacent parishes of Lyme Handley, Poynton and Adlington and makes for some interesting coal mining development on the different estates.

In the late 1840s the land here was in the ownership of the executors of the late William Turner, textile manufacturer from Blackburn who had purchased a lot of Pott Shrigley from the Downes family in the early nineteenth century and then moved into their ancestral home at Shrigley Hall. The 1848 tithe map shows a trackway from a wharf on the canal to the site of this pit and I suspect that coal was being trammed up to the boats at this time by the lessees Samuel Hunt & Co. By the early 1880s the pit was being operated by the Needham family who had originated in nearby Worth but had for many years operated collieries in Hurdsfield, Macclesfield. George Needham is listed as owner and manager in an 1884 list of collieries, but he had died in 1880 and I suspect that by then the colliery was being run by his son Joseph who was living with his family at Red Acre at the time of the 1881 census. He stated his occupation as Engine Man as he had been since the 1850s at Hurdsfield. By 1888 operations appear to have ceased and the tramway is noted as disused. Joseph went off to Chorlton to become a coal merchant.

The tramroad embankment is seen running in from the right side of the photograph and the spoil tip of the pit is left centre. The extract from the 1882 Ordnance Survey map has the tramroad alignment running up from the bottom and the position from which the photograph was taken marked with a red X. The shaft here was 255ft deep to the Arley seam which is locally known as the Redacre Mine and is about 2ft thick. It is a good quality coal and burned well when I tried the pieces collected from the spoil tip.