tarboat's photos with the keyword: pit

Marl pit serving the Rosemary Hill Tileries on Cemetery Road, Silverdale. The was a brickworks operating on this site from before 1841 when it was occupied by William Brough. John Nash Peake took on the yard in 1875 and then Walley and Alsop making tiles in 1921. From 1926 to 1975 it was T E Walley and then G H Downing Ltd until sold to Steetley brick in 1981. A year later Steetley closed the works and transferred production to Knutton Tileries nearby. The marl hole continued in use to supply other works until after 2006 when it became a landfill with significant subsequent problems for the locals due to smells.

There are several areas of mining for ironstone still visible in the Emley area of West Yorkshire. Those featured in this panorama lie to the south of Woodhouse Lane and Bentley Grange Farm. The earliest workings are thought to be the monks from the Abbey of Byland in North Yorkshire who established a furnace adjacent to Bank Wood. By the mid 15th century this appears to have ceased and it was not until the late 16th century that the Wentworth family exploited the Tankersley ironstone bed in this area. These remains are most likely from this latter period. In the 1950s much of the surrounding area was opencast mined for coal and the ironstone remains lost. This surviving area is now a scheduled ancient monument. Other pits can be found in Bank Wood and in fields to the west of the wood.

This house with fine views over Cheshire is today known as Hilltop Cottage, although a few locals still know it as ‘Longchimney’. If you look closely at the photo you can see a depression in the ground in the lower right, this marks the shaft of the Lower Pit that was 213 ft deep to the Reform seam, passing through the Gees seam a short distance above. In the background just below the large tree at the rear of the house was the Bye or Rise Pit. This was 207ft deep. The left section of the house with the gable end was the winding enginehouse for the two pits and in 1826 held a rotative atmospheric beam engine. It is described in the Colliery Inventory for that year as: One Engine at Gees to Wind from 2 Pits 28" cylinder on the common principle, Iron carriage beams, spur gears, flat rope drums wrought iron boiler the whole fixed up in a building complete. The mining engineer John Buddle, writing in the same year noted: A common atmospheric winding engine with a 28in. cylinder, called about a 12 horse power. He also recorded that there were: 5 Getters employed who work 5 quarters per day at present. The water is drawn by the Winding Engine at the Low Pit in buckets – feeder about 600 Galls a day. By 1826 the pit was beginning to reach the end of its productive life and it is likely that by the 1830s the engine had been removed for reuse elsewhere on the colliery. The house remained and was converted to living accommodation and was extended significantly in the last twenty years.