Lea Green Colliery

Overview

A St Helens colliery in Lowfield Lane, first sunk by James Radley in the early 1870s and worked for ninety years as three pits — the Old, the King and the Queen — under the Sutton Heath and Lea Green company and then the National Coal Board, until production ceased in 1964.

History

The first shafts at Lea Green were sunk by James Radley in the early to mid 1870s, and the colliery first appears in the Mines Lists for 1877. It was not the first coal got in the district: the Eltonhead family had worked coal there as far back as the sixteenth century, and the Ordnance Survey of 1849 shows an Elton Head Colliery beside the Liverpool and Manchester railway with disused shafts marked around it. Radley, who also held Nutgrove, Thatto Heath and Sutton Heath collieries, was four times mayor of St Helens from 1873 and died at Sherdley Hall in March 1885. His widow, Fanny Prescott Radley, ran the pit for a few years before forming the Sutton Heath and Lea Green Collieries Company Limited, registered on 28 June 1890 with a capital of £100,000 and the Radley family keeping control. William Moore Campbell was made managing director at £500 a year and five per cent of net profits.

The new company invested heavily. By 1892 the sinking of the Queen and King pits was well advanced, new surface buildings went up and the railway layout was enlarged; from 1893 the contractor Isaiah Piggott sank the King mine's two shafts. The pit's proximity to the Liverpool and Manchester line was its making, and it was worked in step with the neighbouring Sutton Heath colliery throughout. By 1909 there were three pits, called the Old, the King and the Queen. The parent company was reconstructed in April 1920, reporting average profits of £89,309 a year over the previous seven, with Lea Green its most important asset and the holder of three of its five winding shafts.

After the Second World War, with the Bevin boys leaving, the colliery turned its worked-out Old pit into a training centre for school-leavers four hundred feet down. Nationalisation came in 1947, when 1,515 were employed. In January 1943 the company had closed Sherdley colliery and moved five hundred of its miners to the Queen pit against their will, which made relations difficult for years. In August 1962 the Coal Board proposed concentrating work on a single face and displacing 270 men; the Lancashire miners' conference opposed it and lost. The Board then closed the colliery altogether, production ceasing in 1964, when Lea Green raised 200,000 tons and employed six hundred. Its under-manager Harry Foxley said at the time that a million tons of coal still lay beneath it.

Geology

The colliery worked the St Helens part of the Lancashire coalfield through a long list of named delfs and seams. Over its life the three pits took the Four Feet, Ravenhead Main Delf, Potato Delf, Main Delf, St Helens Four Feet, Pigeon House, Yard, Earthy Delf, Higher and Lower Florida, Wigan Five Feet, Plodder, Arley and Trencherbone at Nos 1 and 2; the King, Little Delf, Sir John, Queen, Rushy Park and Haigh Yard at the King pit; and the Queen, Sir John, Ravenhead Higher and Main Delfs, Bastian and Rushy Park at the Queen pit. Gas was a standing hazard, and after a heavy fall in the waste in 1888 it reached the naked candles of men waiting at the face.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (well documented example)

Workings

Three pits. The Old pit was Radley's original sinking of the 1870s, nearing exhaustion by the 1950s and given over to training. The King pit's upcast and downcast shafts were sunk from 1893 by the contractor Isaiah Piggott, sinkers working from iron hoppets, and the Queen pit was sunk alongside it, both well advanced by 1892. Coal was drawn in boxes up brows worked by steel rope and jigs, with pony drivers moving journeys of tubs underground and men riding trams from the shaft bottom to the face in the Queen pit. The Queen's cage was triple-decked and held thirty men. A new eighty-ton-an-hour coal washery was contracted from Simon-Carves Limited in February 1932.

Closure

The National Coal Board proposed in August 1962 to work a single face and displace 270 men, then closed the colliery outright. Production ceased in 1964 — the Northern Mine Research Society gives August, when 338 men worked underground and 174 on the surface, while the Sutton history gives September and allows August. In its last year the pit raised 200,000 tons and employed six hundred, and the last district on production was in the Queen pit.

What remains

Nothing of the colliery stands. The site off Lowfield Lane has been redeveloped, and the mineral lines that served Lea Green and Sutton Manor survive only as footpaths.

None. The three headgears of the Old, King and Queen pits, the pit-head baths of 1939, the canteen and the locomotive shed of 1953 have all gone. The colliery's steam locomotives King, No. 6 and Bellerophon, photographed on the site into the 1960s, were the last of it to be recorded.

Redevelopment

The colliery site has been built over, and the branch that served it has become a walking route through Sutton.

Related mines

• Sutton Manor Colliery — Both St Helens pits in the same ground; the Sutton Heath and Lea Green company held £90,000 of shares in Sutton Manor Collieries Limited, and the mineral line that served Lea Green also served Sutton Manor.

Culture

• Bill Foulkes (Sports)
  Foulkes worked at Lea Green through the first years of his Manchester United career, by his own account as 'assistant manager in a coal mine', doing a shift from 5.30am to 2.30pm and then travelling to Manchester for evening training; he earned more from the colliery than from the club. His own book, The Busby Babes, Men of Magic, is the source.

People

• William Moore Campbell (1835–1906) · manager, 1890–1906 — Managing director of the company that owned the colliery.
• Fanny Prescott Radley · owner, 1885–1890 — Ran the colliery after her husband's death and then formed the company that took it on.
• James Radley (1810–1885) · owner, 1870–1885 — Sank the colliery's first shafts and owned it until his death.

What's uncertain

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

• Production ceased in 1964: the Northern Mine Research Society gives August, when 338 men worked underground and 174 on the surface, and the Sutton history gives September while allowing August. In that year the pit produced 200,000 tons and employed six hundred. (disputed) ^1,4

Recorded claims

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

• The first shafts at Lea Green were sunk by James Radley in the early to mid 1870s, and the colliery first appears in the Mines Lists for 1877. ^1,2
• Coal had been got in the district long before: the Eltonhead family worked it as far back as the sixteenth century, and the Ordnance Survey of 1849 marks an Elton Head Colliery beside the Liverpool to Manchester line at Lea Green with disused shafts around it. ¹
• Radley died at Sherdley Hall on 28 March 1885, aged 75; his widow Fanny Prescott Radley ran the colliery before creating the Sutton Heath and Lea Green Collieries Company Limited, registered on 28 June 1890 with a capital of £100,000. ^1,2
• William Moore Campbell was appointed managing director at an initial salary of £500 a year plus five per cent of net profits; he died in May 1906 aged 71 leaving £77,163. ^1,2
• By 1892 the sinking of the new Queen and King pits was well underway, and in 1893 the contractor Isaiah Piggott was commissioned to sink an upcast and a downcast shaft for the King mine. ¹
• The Lists of Mines record 445 employed at Lea Green in 1894 with a further 97 at the New Pits; by 1933 the three pits together employed 1,863, and 1,515 at nationalisation in 1947, when the colliery raised 350,000 tons. ³
• On 4 May 1888 an explosion of gas in the Potato Delf mine killed William Lunt, 26, and eventually two more men — Christopher Tharratt, who took nine months to die, and Matthew Mercer, who died ten months later — and injured others. The gas came off a heavy fall in the waste and was carried to the naked candles of men waiting at the face. ^1,4
• The colliery managers had been advised by Henry Hall, Inspector of Mines, always to use safety lamps, and had not done so; the law then required them only where gas was known to be present. ¹
• On 14 October 1893 a naked candle falling down a shaft under sinking ignited accumulated gas, killing the sinker Evan Jones and dreadfully burning seven others. The inquest jury returned accidental death but made four criticisms of the sinking, and Henry Hall prosecuted the company for inadequate ventilation and failing to use safety lamps; the prosecution failed. ^1,4
• On 15 December 1923 a triple-decked cage holding thirty miners overshot while being lowered in the Queen pit, after the winder applied more steam by turning a lever the wrong way, and fourteen mineworkers, mainly boys, were taken to hospital. ¹
• After the Second World War the colliery made a training centre for juveniles in its worked-out Old pit, 400 feet down in ground unworked for forty years, where boys of fifteen and a half to seventeen and a half spent sixteen weeks learning face work and haulage before being sent to one of ten pits in the area. ¹
• Bill Foulkes, the Manchester United centre-half who survived the Munich air disaster, worked down the Queen pit in the late 1940s while already playing for the club part time. ¹
• New pit-head baths costing £27,000, with a canteen and bike shed, were opened on 20 May 1939 by William Foster of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation, and accommodated 1,728 male and 52 female workers. ¹
• In January 1943 the company closed Sherdley Colliery and transferred about five hundred miners, along with women and girls from the screens, to the Queen pit at Lea Green; the men believed their own pit had life left in it and resented the move for years. ¹
• Production ceased in 1964: the Northern Mine Research Society gives August, when 338 men worked underground and 174 on the surface, and the Sutton history gives September while allowing August. In that year the pit produced 200,000 tons and employed six hundred. (disputed) ^1,4
• Harry Foxley, under-manager of the last district on production in the Queen pit, was reported at the time of closure to have said that the colliery still had a million tons of coal beneath it. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Lea Green Colliery (1870s-1964), An Illustrated History of Old Sutton in St Helens — Stephen Wainwright, Sutton Beauty & Heritage
2. (secondary) Lea Green Colliery — Grace's Guide to British Industrial History
3. (primary) Lea Green Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
4. (secondary) Accidents and incidents at Lea Green Colliery — Northern Mine Research Society

Record created: 28 September 2026 · Last researched: 28 September 2026