CAN readers help me with my hobby of collecting brass embossed colliery lamp checks or tallies and tokens, as they are sometimes called?

These brass discs had the name of the colliery on them and also the number of the miner, who would draw this check along with his lamp from the lamp room before going down the mine.

I am trying to obtain ones from former collieries in the Lancashire Coalfield - Huncoat Colliery; near Accrington; Copy Colliery, near Burnley; Moorfield Colliery, near Accrington; Welch Whittle Colliery, and Ellerbeck Colliery both near Chorley; Astley Green Colliery, Leigh and Nook Colliery, both Leigh; and Deerplay Colliery, near Burnley.

I would like to hear from any former miners who remember these and other pits working and any help in enabling me to obtain lamp checks from them would be very much appreciated.

PETER WALL, 5 Cherry Grove, Norton, Stourbridge, West Midlands DY8 3YL.

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