George Orwell at Bryn Hall Colliery

On 23 February 1936 George Orwell went down Bryn Hall Colliery near Ashton-in-Makerfield, which he knew as 'Crippen's' after its owners, for The Road to Wigan Pier. His diary describes the 300-yard drop, the crawl to the face and the heat, the raw material for the book's chapter on the miner's work.

The mining history in this record

Orwell spent February and March 1936 in Wigan, Barnsley and Sheffield gathering material for a book on the industrial north. On 23 February he went down 'Crippen's mine' with Jerry Kennan, an electrician friend of Kennan's with his two small sons, two other electricians and an engineer of the pit who showed them round. The pit was Bryn Hall, near Ashton-in-Makerfield, worked by the Crippin family since the 1860s.

His diary records the cage dropping 300 yards, the stuffed-up feeling in the ears, and three hours below covering about two miles. In his notes he judged Crippen's old-fashioned but no worse than most: dry and hot, about 100 degrees in the hottest place, with the face three quarters of a mile from the cage, most of it walked bent double. He noted the 'pot-holes' in the roof where stones big enough to kill a man had fallen. Bryn Hall was, at the time he wrote, the only mine he had seen.

People

George Orwell; Jerry Kennan, who went down with him.

Legacy today

The Road to Wigan Pier was published in 1937. Bryn Hall closed in 1945; its site beside Bryn Gates Lane has been reclaimed as grassland and woodland.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• George Orwell went down Bryn Hall Colliery in February 1936 while gathering material for The Road to Wigan Pier. (documented fact) ^1,2
• His diary for 24 February 1936 records going down 'Crippen's mine' the day before with Jerry Kennan, electricians and an engineer of the pit, 300 yards to the cage bottom. (contemporary account) ³
• 'Crippen's' is Bryn Hall, which the Crippin family owned from 1866. (reasonable inference) ^1,2
• Orwell found Crippen's old-fashioned, dry and hot, about three quarters of a mile from cage to face, mostly walked bent double. (contemporary account) ⁴

Mines

• Bryn Hall Colliery — Greater Manchester
  George Orwell went down this pit, which he called Crippen's, in February 1936 while researching The Road to Wigan Pier.

Sources

1. (secondary) Bryn Hall Colliery — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Orwell's Tracks: Wigan (archived 3 December 2013) — Orwell's Tracks
3. (primary) George Orwell, Wigan diary, February 1936 (transcription) — Wigan Building Preservation Trust
4. (primary) George Orwell, notes on Wigan, 1936 (transcription) — Wigan Building Preservation Trust

Record created: 3 October 2026 · Last researched: 4 October 2026