Strangeways Hall Colliery

Overview

A colliery at Low Green, Hindley, started about 1842 and worked by Crompton & Shawcross from 1875. In 1931 it raised 300,000 tons a year with 1,320 people, and it closed in January 1937.

History

Strangeways Hall Colliery lay at Low Green, Hindley, off Liverpool Road near Hindley and Platt Bridge station, a few hundred yards from Strangeways Hall farm. Byrom, Taylor & Byrom started it about 1842. It passed to William Hayes, for whom Walker Brothers supplied an air-compressing engine in December 1871, and in 1875 to the Crompton & Shawcross partnership of Ince and Hindley. A Chancery Court order wound that firm up in October 1897, closing its collieries. In December 1897 a new company, Crompton & Shawcross Ltd, with J. E. Rayner as principal shareholder, bought them and restarted them. Rayner went on to add neighbouring collieries, among them Hindley Hall and John Scowcroft's Hindley Green pits.

Plans of its workings, often drawn together with the Dukes and Trafford pits and with Hindley Hall and Grange, cover the Pemberton, Ince and Wigan seams from 1870 to 1937. By 1931 it was working the Wigan Four Feet, Five Feet and Six Feet and the Riding mine by electric power at 400 volts, raising 300,000 tons a year with 1,000 underground and 320 on the surface. It closed in January 1937, and its site was left as pit waste beside Liverpool Road.

Geology

Lancashire Coal Measures: the Wigan Four Feet, Five Feet, Six Feet and Two Feet, the Riding, the Pemberton Four Feet and Five Feet, and the Ince Yard, Four Feet, Seven Feet and Furnace.

Workings

Worked with neighbouring pits including the Dukes and Trafford; air-compressing engine from 1871; electric power at 400 volts by 1931.

Closure

Closed in January 1937; the last plans of its workings are dated 1936-37.

What remains

Unknown.

Redevelopment

Unknown.

Related mines

• Hindley Green Colliery — Both owned by Crompton & Shawcross Ltd after it bought the Scowcroft pits in 1901.

Recorded claims

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

• Started about 1842 by Byrom, Taylor & Byrom; held by William Hayes and bought by Crompton & Shawcross in 1875. ¹
• The Crompton & Shawcross partnership was wound up in Chancery in October 1897; Crompton & Shawcross Ltd bought and restarted the collieries that December. ¹
• In 1931 it raised 300,000 tons a year from the Wigan Four, Five and Six Feet and the Riding, with 1,000 underground and 320 on the surface. ¹
• Closed in January 1937. ¹
• Its last plans, with the Dukes and Trafford pits, are dated 1936-37. ²
• Its Pemberton Five Feet and Four Feet workings were planned as abandoned in 1870. ³
• It lay off Liverpool Road, near Hindley and Platt Bridge station, and its site was left as pit waste. ⁴

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Messrs. Crompton & Shawcross Collieries — Northern Mine Research Society
2. (primary) Mine plan: Strangeways Hall, Dukes, Trafford, Ince Lower Yard (Bulldog) — British Geological Survey
3. (primary) Mine plan: Strangeways Hall, Dukes, Trafford, Pemberton Five Feet and Four Feet — British Geological Survey
4. (observational) Strangeways Hall farm (Wigan World message board) — Wigan World

Record created: 2 October 2026 · Last researched: 2 October 2026