Clock Face Colliery

Overview

A St Helens colliery on the south side of Gorsey Lane, on the former Bold Hall estate. The Bold Hall Estate Co. paid £100,000 for 1,500 acres and began sinking three shafts in June 1896, only to abandon the work in March 1900 after an overwhelming influx of water at 500 feet. The Wigan Coal and Iron Company took it over in 1904, solved the problem by pumping — over 700,000 gallons a day, of which 500,000 were sold to St Helens Corporation as drinking water — and built a model village round it with an institute, a school and football and cricket grounds. It closed in 1966.

History

The pit took its name from the old Clock Face Inn and Clock Face Road; the village as it is now did not exist when sinking began. The Bold Hall Estate Co. Ltd, registered on 20 July 1893 with a capital of £200,000, paid £100,000 for the 1,500-acre estate. Coal lay only eighty yards below the surface and prospects seemed high, and the company began sinking three shafts in June 1896. It went badly. Nos. 1 and 2 were sunk to 500 feet and had to be abandoned through what The Times later called an overwhelming influx of water; striking the water table at that depth made the venture uneconomic. The sinking killed men as it went: Andrew Neary was fatally injured in July 1896 when water was accidentally tipped onto him, the sinker Charles Booth lost his life in 1899, and John Davies of Neill’s Row sued the company for £300 after gelignite cartridges exploded in his face and cost him virtually all his sight. In March 1900 the Manchester Times reported that 250 men who had worked on the shafts over the past four or five years had been discharged; high fuel and iron prices had contributed to the suspension as well as the water. In 1904 the Wigan Coal and Iron Company — at its formation in 1865 the largest company in Britain — took the colliery over and applied its engineering to the problem. The first phase was powerful pumps capable of drawing 400 gallons a minute, housed in a dedicated building with an attendant to maintain them and report variations in their cycle. No. 1 shaft was then converted into a pumping pit handling over 700,000 gallons a day, of which 500,000 were sold to St Helens Corporation as drinking water; three ponds on the site stored the rest, which was used for washing coal among other things. Alfred Hewlett, nephew of a co-founder of the Wigan company, was probably the first manager, and the 1911 census shows winders, an undermanager, engineers and clerks all born in the Wigan area working at Clock Face. Getting the pit fit for purpose cost more lives. On 15 April 1906 the sinker George Macintosh, 27, was 200 yards down in a small sinking tub with three other men, fixing a steel wire rope to carry pumping pipes, when the rope came loose and fell, cutting off his head and left arm; they fell 300 yards to the pit bottom and left his torso in the tub. At the inquest it emerged that he had uncoiled the rope downwards from the top of the pit to save time rather than upwards from the bottom. The company built the district around the pit. Clock Face Institute opened on 9 January 1914, opened by the Earl of Crawford — the company’s chairman, sometimes called Lord Wigan — at a cost of £2,000, with a meeting room fifty feet by twenty-two, a billiards room, a games room and dressing rooms and baths for the football and cricket teams, set between the football and cricket grounds as part of a model village of new colliery houses. Clock Face Colliery School followed in September 1917 at a cost of over £5,000. Pit-head baths were formally opened on 29 July 1939, again with the Earl of Crawford presiding. The colliery closed in 1966.

Geology

The St Helens end of the Lancashire coalfield, where the Coal Measures lie beneath the New Red Sandstone — and it was the sandstone that nearly finished the colliery before it started. Coal was only eighty yards down on the Bold Hall estate, but the water in the overlying sandstone flooded the shafts at 500 feet and defeated the first sinking entirely. Once pumping was mastered, the same water became an asset: the sandstone yielded 700,000 gallons a day, good enough for St Helens Corporation to buy for drinking.

Workings

Three shafts begun in June 1896; Nos. 1 and 2 reached 500 feet before the water beat them. After 1904 No. 1 was converted to a pumping pit drawing over 700,000 gallons a day, with the pumps — built by Musgrave & Sons of Bolton — in a dedicated house under a full-time attendant, and three surface ponds to store the water. The colliery stood 800 metres east of Clock Face station on the London & North Western Railway’s St Helens line, to which it was joined by a short branch. Pit-head baths opened on 29 July 1939.

Closure

Clock Face Colliery closed in 1966.

What remains

The colliery site is now Clock Face Country Park, and the village the Wigan Coal and Iron Company built around the pit — its institute, its school and its terraced colliery houses — is what survives of it.

None of the colliery identified; the company village survives.

Nearby mines

• Bold Colliery — 3.2 km NE
• Sutton Manor Colliery — 4.1 km NE
• Cronton Colliery — 5.2 km SW
• Haydock Colliery — 6.3 km NE, Lancashire
• Parkside Colliery — 8.5 km NE, Lancashire

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Recorded claims

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

• The Bold Hall Estate Co. Ltd, registered on 20 July 1893 with £200,000 capital, paid £100,000 for the 1,500-acre estate and began sinking three shafts; coal lay eighty yards below the surface, but Nos. 1 and 2 were sunk to 500 feet and abandoned through an overwhelming influx of water. ¹
• On 23 March 1900 the Manchester Times reported that 250 men involved in the sinking and construction of the shafts over the past four or five years had been discharged, high fuel and iron prices having contributed to the suspension as well as the water. ¹
• The Wigan Coal and Iron Company took the colliery over in 1904 and applied powerful pumps capable of removing 400 gallons a minute; No. 1 shaft was converted into a pumping pit handling over 700,000 gallons of water a day, of which 500,000 were sold to St Helens Corporation as drinking water. ¹
• Andrew Neary was fatally injured in July 1896 when water was accidentally tipped onto him; the sinker Charles Booth lost his life in 1899; and on 15 April 1906 the sinker George Macintosh, 27, was killed 200 yards down when a steel wire rope came loose and severed his head and left arm. ¹
• Clock Face Institute was opened on 9 January 1914 by the Earl of Crawford, chairman of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company, at a cost of £2,000, with a meeting room, billiards and games rooms and dressing rooms and baths for the football and cricket teams — part of a model village the company was creating, with the institute set between the football and cricket grounds. The colliery school followed in September 1917 at a cost of over £5,000. ¹
• The BGS catalogue of abandoned mine plans holds records for Clock Face Colliery, including plans filed jointly as "Clock Face Nos. 1, 2, 3 and Bold No. 1". ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Clock Face Colliery, part 1 — Sutton Beauty & Heritage
2. (primary) BGS mine plans catalogue: CLOCK FACE COLLIERY — British Geological Survey
3. (secondary) Clock Face Colliery, Part 2 — Sutton Beauty & Heritage

Record created: 7 September 2026 · Last researched: 7 September 2026