tarboat's photos with the keyword: lyme handley

This unprepossessing building once housed the Newcomen atmospheric type steam pumping engine for the Redacre Colliery in Lyme Handley, Cheshire. The building has had the top section and pitched roof removed at some time. The bob wall is the section to the right with the shaft immediately in front. There is also a stone-lined spillway to the river on the right. The pit was working before 1800 and seems to have continued until the 1840s.

Shaft No.2 of the Redacre Colliery in Lyme Handley lies alongside the Macclesfield Canal and was certainly active in the 1830s although the colliery seems to have been sunk before 1800. The flat area to the left of the shaft mound is likely to have housed the horse gin for winding coal up the shaft. The are also remains of steam winding engine bedstones in the hollow behind this.

Sponds Colliery lies across a moor some 1100ft up in the parish of Lyme Handley. in the nineteenth century the land was in the ownership of the Legh's of Lyme Hall and the coal mines were let for many years to James Jackson, a farmer from Pott Shrigley. He worked the Sweet Seam via a series of pits which he sank as the workings moved from north to south across the moor. This shaft was around 300ft deep and may have been in operation in the 1870s or early 1880s. The whim winding gin stood just behind the photographer. Along the trackclose to the wall in the background can be seen the spoil from another shaft.

This little bothy type building caught my eye as I was walking in Lyme Handley this afternoon. To the right (out of frame) is a small field barn at the edge of the walled yard. The bothy roof is formed of lovely gritstone flags and the ridge pieces are all hand shaped from gritstone. The dressed quoins are a nice touch too.

The development of Middlecale Colliery began in 1835 when local farmer Thomas Brocklehurst obtained a lease from the Legh family of Lyme Hall. The main shaft was alongside the Macclesfield Canal and a number of peripheral sinkings were developed including this shaft close to the western edge of the colliery. The remains of the shaft are on the left and associated gin circle is in the centre, as is the route of the tramroad back to the canal which lies on the other side of the hedge behind the house. The spoil tip of the main winding shaft is marked by tops of the clump of trees on the right side of the horizon. The colliery was abandoned in 1878 having exhausted the two seams available.

It has become a regular occurrence to see paper waste being spread on land as a soil conditioner. This mountain was being loaded into spreaders for application onto the fields on the uplands of Lyme Handley.

Contractors D G Mills are undertaking piling of a weak section of the Macclesfield Canal embankment at Middlecale. The interlocking heavy duty steel piles are being driven using a Menzi Muck A91 Powerline spider excavator with vibrating piling rig. It pushed this pile into position in less than a minute. Picking it up and getting it into position took rather longer.

The message is clear at this farm in Cheshire. :-)

A view of the swingbridge remains from the footbridge over the Macclesfield Canal in Lyme Handley, south of Poynton. The construction of a footbridge as well as a swing bridge in this rural location is a bit of a mystery. The Macclesfield Canal was never so busy that the walker would have been waiting for very long before the bridge was swung back to allow them to continue on their way. The field beyond the hedge is filled with coal workings and there is a shaft off to the left alongside the canal, so there would probably have been a certain amount of coal traffic across the swingbridge in the early years of the canal, but this would have petered out by the end of the 1830s. The swingbridge remained in use until 1971 when it was summarily removed by British Waterways.

Type 24 pillbox alongside Bridge 13 at Middlecale on the Macclesfield Canal. This was one of the defensive structures along Stop Line No.6 which ran, mainly along canals from Tamworth to south-east Manchester. These days it performs peaceful duties as a garden shed/store for the adjacent moorings.

One of the more interesting survivals of our local collieries is this Newcomen enginehouse that pumped the Redacre Pit in Lyme Handley. It may well have been erected here before 1800, but it was certainly still in use in 1830. The building has had some of its height reduced in the intervening years, but the site of the boiler chimney can be seen on the corner of the structrue. The back wall also shows the blocked up entrance through which the cylinder would have been brought. The shaft was outside the other end of the building

Coal mining on Sponds Moor has a long history back into the eighteenth century. In the second half of the nineteenth century a series of shafts was developed by the lessee James Jackson, each of which was wound with a horse gin. This particular shaft towards the top of the moor is shown as working on the 1873 OS map, but was abandoned by 1897. In 1982 when I took this photograph the bearing stone for the gin was visible in the side of the collapsed shaft. The metal piece was for the pintle of the vertical post to pivot in. On a recent visit the stone was no longer visible and may have sliped further into the shaft.

Sponds Colliery lies across a moor some 1100ft up in the parish of Lyme Handley. in the nineteenth century the land was in the ownership of the Legh's of Lyme Hall and the coal mines were let for many years to James Jackson, a farmer from Pott Shrigley. He worked the Sweet Seam via a series of pits which he sank as the workings moved from north to south across the moor. This shaft was around 300ft deep and may have been in operation in the 1870s or early 1880s. On the bank immediately behind can be seen the circle on which the whim winding gin stood and under the grass can be found the flagged path upon which the horse walked.