THE coal mines of East Lancashire were a major employer for nearly 150 years, until the last deep pit — Hapton Valley Colliery — closed in 1982.

While all our towns became major cotton manufacturing centres, often with more looms than people, it was coal which fuelled the furnaces and boilers for the mills’ steam engines.

Without coal, Britain would never have become the great manufacturing nation it did.

in the early days, young boys started at the pit with practically no training – they would spend a few weeks on the surface, sometimes taking the stones out of the coal or oiling coal tubs, before being sent underground.

At first they would work near the shaft bottom, usually on the haulage system before gradually being moved nearer and nearer the coalface, where they would eventually graduate after a number of years.

At the end of both world wars the cry was loud for ‘more coal, more coal’ in a bid to get the economy back on its feet – and on both occasions miners responded with greater output.

The first sod of Bank Hall colliery was cut by Elijah Helm in 1865 and when work sinking its two pit shafts was completed, men celebrated with a meal at the Bull Hotel, old Sparrow Hawk and The Talbot.

A third shaft was sunk in the early 1890s and the only seam worked at this time was the Arley mine, which offered clean coal four feet thick and was the best seam of coal ever worked in the Burnley area.

In 1913/14 work began on sinking the fourth shaft, which was 1,506 feet deep and the deepest ever to be worked in the Burnley coalfield.

The mine was reorganised under the National Coal Board in the 1950s, a project which cost more than £1 million – in which new battery locos were installed at the bottom of No 4 shaft and a new training centre was opened.

Increased costs and frequent ignitions on the coal face, however, made it clear that the pit was coming to the end of its profitable life and in 1971, 575 miners received their notice and it closed down, except for a handful of men employed on salvage The two shafts at Huncoat Colliery were sunk in 1893 by George Hargreaves Collieries, while the Upper Mountain mine was developed in the late 1930s.

In 1950, a new pit bottom was constructed and two of the faces were fully automated using machines which cut and loaded the coal automatically.

Coal was transported in three ton mine cars hauled by steam locomotives, with half the output going to general industry and half to a crushing machine on the surface, which was then sent on to the NCB coke works at Altham. The colliery was closed down in 1968.

Whinney Hill Colliery at Clayton-le-Moors dated from 1871, and was really an extension of Moorfield Colliery, which only had one shaft.

It was at Whinney Hill where most of the 68 victims of an explosion at Moorfield, in Burnley Road, were brought out of the pit in 1883.

Its claim to fame was that comedian Eric Morecambe worked there as a Bevan boy during the Second World War.

Moorfield was abandoned in 1948, though the coke works remained on the site until the late sixties.

Picture 1 shows Town Bent colliery, which was one of the 15 coal mines operating in the Oswaldtwistle and Church area in the 1800s – at its peak the East Lancashire coalfield, centred on Burnley, Accrington and Rossendale, had around 50 pits.

Coal mining was second only to textiles as the major employer in the area.

Oswaldtwistle’s three major mines, Aspen, Lower Darwen and Town Bent, which closed in 1925, together employed some 1,000 men.

Picture 2 shows members of the rescue team at Town Bent, with their primitive headwear, breathing apparatus, lamps and knee pads.

According to the notice in the background, they were taking part in a competition staged by the coal owners’ association.

Picture 3 We’re not sure where this picture, from our archives, was taken, but the caption on the back tells us that the miners were about to be lowered to the coal face.

Picture 4 shows some of the miners at Martholme Colliery, near Great Harwood, before the First World War. If you look closely, you’ll see that some of the workers at the pithead are mere boys.

Picture 5 shows a pit steam loco pulling empty coal trucks, soon to be loaded at the coal face, at the entrance into Thorney Bank drift mine at Hapton in 1952.

The caption on Picture 6 shows the main tunnel and shaft entrance of an East Lancashire pit, but it doesn’t say which one. The date is 1950 and the tunnel is illuminated with electric strip lighting.