Moresby Colliery

Overview

A single deep colliery on the coast plateau north-east of Whitehaven, sunk in 1879 by the Moresby Coal Company on a sixty-year royalty leased from the Earl of Lonsdale, and known through its life by two names — Moresby Colliery to the official returns, Walkmill to almost everybody else. It worked coking coal for the West Cumberland iron trade behind a long bank of coke ovens, passed with its company into the Workington Iron & Steel group in the 1920s and to the National Coal Board at nationalisation, and closed in 1961 because its seams were exhausted. The site is now Walkmill Community Woodland.

History

The Moresby Coal Company Limited was incorporated on 22 September 1877 with £100,000 of capital, to take up an agreement made that March between the Earl of Lonsdale and William Fletcher and J. S. Simpson for mines in the townships of Distington, Moresby, Hensingham and Weddicar. The lease, dated 25 March 1877, ran for sixty years over a royalty of some 4,000 acres of coking coal. The Main Band was proved 6 ft 6 in thick at Walkmill and Fairfield during 1877, and the Walkmill pit was sunk and raising coal by the end of 1878 — the pit that the company’s own returns called Moresby Colliery. A second pit followed near Fairfield in 1880, named Oatlands. The 1888 list of mines under the Coal Mines Act returns both Moresby Walkmill Pit and Moresby Oatlands Pit to the Moresby Coal Co. of Whitehaven. The colliery was laid out as a long north-south group of buildings with the shafts at the north end and a bank of coke ovens down the west side, all served by rail lines curving south-west to join the Cleator and Workington Junction Railway at Moresby Junction. The beck was dammed beside the shafts to feed the steam engines, and an aerial ropeway carried spoil to the top of the heap. Sixty Koppers regenerative coke ovens were still listed on the plant inventory in October 1932, producing furnace coke, tar, sulphate of ammonia and crude benzol. The company added “Ltd” to its name in 1890 and its ordinary shares were bought by the Workington Iron & Steel Company in the 1920s, one of a run of purchases meant to secure coal and coke for that firm’s blast furnaces; the colliery kept the old company name. Output stood above a quarter of a million tons in 1927 and 1928 and every year to 1940 beat 1911–12, which was a good showing for a coalfield whose steeply sloping, heavily faulted seams made cheap extraction hard. Oatlands, by contrast, stopped production in the 1930 slump and closed for good in 1934.

Geology

The site lies on Carboniferous Coal Measures overlain by Devensian glacial till. The Cumberland coalfield’s seams slope steeply and are cut by numerous faults, so a great deal of engineering was needed to win coal economically; even Walkmill’s respectable tonnages were low set against pits in flatter fields. The Main Band was the seam the sinking was aimed at.

Workings

Two shafts at the north end of the site, with heapsteads, a long bank of coke ovens along the west side and rail lines throughout. A dam on the beck supplied the boilers, overflowing by a weir into a larger pool that reached south as far as the railway. An aerial ropeway took spoil to the top of the pit heap, and a weighbridge installed in 1913 weighed loaded coal and coke wagons at the west edge. Sixty Koppers regenerative coke ovens were on the plant list in 1932, by which time coke production had already stopped for want of demand from the region’s iron trade. New buildings were still being proposed in the 1950s — an explosives store in 1954, pithead baths in 1957 that appear never to have been built.

Closure

The pit closed in 1961 because its coal seams were exhausted. Production had fallen year on year from 81,297 tons in 1953 to 51,105 tons in 1960. Of the 170 men employed at closure, nearly two-thirds transferred to the Haig, Lowca and Solway collieries and about forty stayed on for salvage and safety work.

What remains

A 36-hectare community woodland. Almost every colliery building was demolished before any landscaping began; the pit heap stood for some years and was dealt with in two phases of reclamation, in the early 1970s and the 1990s, ending with most of the spoil removed and the ground regraded, seeded and planted. A 2022 archaeological assessment by Archaeological Services Durham University found a few structural elements surviving: the 1879 pit road up from Moresby Parks village, the early twentieth-century colliery dam beside it, the partly canalised beck along the western edge with the remains of two small weirs, the trackbed of the mineral line, the remains of the 1913 weighbridge building, and a large concrete wall at the south end of the old heap.

The pit road, the colliery dam, two weirs on the canalised beck, the mineral-line trackbed, the weighbridge building’s remains and a concrete wall at the south end of the former heap.

Redevelopment

Walkmill Community Woodland, held by Moresby Parish Council on a 99-year lease after a community asset transfer. In 2021 a partnership of the parish council, the Walkmill Activity Group and West Cumbria Rivers Trust won £1.9m of a £2.3m National Lottery Heritage Fund project, “A Wilder Walkmill”, to improve habitat and access over four years.

Nearby mines

• William Pit — 3.2 km SW
• Wellington Pit — 3.9 km SW
• Saltom Colliery — 4.0 km SW
• Crossgill Mine — 4.3 km SE
• Haig Colliery — 5.5 km SW

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 Moresby Coal Company Limited was incorporated on 22 September 1877 to take up a sixty-year lease, dated 25 March 1877, of mines in Distington, Moresby, Hensingham and Weddicar from the Earl of Lonsdale — a royalty of about 4,000 acres of coking coal. ^1,2
• The Walkmill pit was sunk and raising coal by the end of 1878, and is the pit known both as Moresby Colliery and as Walkmill Colliery. The archaeological assessment dates the sinking to 1879, following Oliver Wood’s history of the West Cumberland industry. (disputed) ^1,2
• The colliery closed in 1961 with its seams exhausted; output had fallen from 81,297 tons in 1953 to 51,105 tons in 1960, and of 170 men employed at closure nearly two-thirds transferred to the Haig, Lowca and Solway collieries. ¹
• A plant list of October 1932 records a battery of sixty Koppers regenerative coke ovens with the apparatus for furnace coke, tar, sulphate of ammonia and crude benzol, and notes that coke production had already stopped for want of demand from the region’s ironworks. ¹
• The 1888 list of mines under the Coal Mines Act returns Moresby Walkmill Pit and Moresby Oatlands Pit, both to the Moresby Coal Co. of Whitehaven. ³
• A 2022 archaeological assessment found the 1879 pit road, an early twentieth-century colliery dam, the partly canalised beck with two small weirs, the mineral-line trackbed, the remains of a weighbridge building of 1913 and a concrete wall at the south end of the old pit heap. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Walkmill Woods & Colliery, Moresby, Cumbria: archaeological assessment (report 5879) — Archaeological Services Durham University, for West Cumbria Rivers Trust
2. (secondary) Moresby Coal Co — Grace's Guide to British Industrial History
3. (primary) 1888 List of mines under the Coal Mines Act — Cumberland — Durham Mining Museum
4. (observational) A Wilder Walkmill — West Cumbria Rivers Trust
5. (secondary) Moresby Colliery — Durham Mining Museum

Record created: 6 September 2026 · Last researched: 6 September 2026