Burgh Colliery

Overview

A colliery of several shafts on the hillside east of Birkacre, south of Chorley, at work by the 1820s, with its own tramway to a depot on Pall Mall. John Hargreaves took it over in 1841, and an explosion in 1846 killed nine, three of them girls.

History

Burgh Colliery was at work by the 1820s, and in the 1830s belonged to Heaton and Hilton. Like the other Chorley collieries of the first half of the nineteenth century it comprised several pits, sunk in the hillside east of Birkacre at the southern end of Burgh Lane, where the site, with two pits, buildings and sidings, can still be traced. A tramway, shown on the 1848 Ordnance Survey map and probably worked with horse-drawn trucks, ran from the colliery past Burgh Hall and Plock Farm to a coal depot on Pall Mall in Chorley; a stretch of its route survives as a footpath edged with grooved sandstone blocks near the site of Plock Farm.

Heaton and Hilton were declared bankrupt in 1841 and John Hargreaves took the colliery over. Burgh was one of the numerous pits and shafts known together as the Coppull collieries, and Hargreaves's Coppull Colliery, west of the Yarrow, was its successor. In 1846 an explosion killed eight or nine, three of them girls (see Disasters, below). A capped shaft of its Drybones pit survives in Yarrow Valley Park.

Geology

Lancashire Coal Measures of the Yarrow valley; the seams worked are not recorded.

Workings

Several shallow shafts on the hillside east of Birkacre, including the Drybones pit; a tramway to a depot on Pall Mall, Chorley.

Closure

Unknown.

What remains

A capped shaft of the Drybones pit, with a plinth that may have carried its winding gear, survives in Yarrow Valley Park; part of the tramway route survives as a footpath near Plock Farm.

Redevelopment

The ground is part of Yarrow Valley Park.

Related mines

• Coppull Colliery — John Hargreaves's Coppull Colliery, west of the Yarrow, succeeded Burgh.

Disasters & major incidents

• Burgh Colliery explosion, 1846
  24 November 1846 · Explosion · 8 fatalities
  On 24 November 1846 two explosions of firedamp, fired by a collier's candle, swept John Hargreaves's Burgh Colliery at Coppull, near Chorley. Eight or nine died, three of them girls working underground four years after the law had barred them.

What's uncertain

Points where sources disagree or the record could not be settled; both accounts are kept. All open questions in the archive.

• Eight men and women were killed in the explosion of 1846. (disputed) ¹

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Burgh Colliery was in operation by the 1820s and was owned in the 1830s by Heaton and Hilton. ¹
• A tramway ran from the colliery on Burgh Lane past Burgh Hall and Plock Farm to a depot on Pall Mall, Chorley. ^1,2
• Heaton and Hilton were declared bankrupt in 1841 and John Hargreaves took the colliery over. ¹
• An explosion in 1846 killed nine, three of them girls, after a collier lit a candle before the fireman's inspection. ³
• Eight men and women were killed in the explosion of 1846. (disputed) ¹
• A capped shaft of the colliery's Drybones pit survives in Yarrow Valley Park. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) The Pits of Pall Mall: A Brief History of Coal Mining in Chorley — Chorley and South Ribble History
2. (secondary) Burgh Colliery Railway — Chorley, Duxbury, Adlington Local History
3. (secondary) List of mining disasters in Lancashire — Wikipedia

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