Windy Bank Pit

Overview

A Joseph Stocks day hole near Halifax, entered by a tunnel, where the eight-year-old hurrier Sally Fletcher and the collier Joseph Barker gave evidence to the Children's Employment Commission in 1841.

History

Windy Bank Pit was one of the small pits around Halifax worked by Joseph Stocks. When the Children's Employment Commission's sub-commissioner Samuel Scriven listed the district's collieries in 1841, he entered Mr Joseph Stock's Windy Bank as a day hole, reached by a tunnel into the hillside rather than a shaft; the same list gives Stocks the Shaw Lane, Booth Town and Oates Royd day holes and the Penfold, Brown Top and Clayton shafts.

Two people from the pit gave evidence. Joseph Barker, a collier, said he had three apprentices, two hurriers and a getter, bound to him until they were twenty-one; he drew their earnings every fortnight and kept them in food, drink and clothing. They went to work at six in the morning, and the hurriers moved about seventeen corves a day, which he thought too much. Scriven found him in a cabin at the tail end smoking a pipe and drinking ale, and described the children he employed as in filth and rags.

Sally Fletcher, aged eight, said she had worked at the pit for just under three years. She could not read or write and had never been to day school or Sunday school. She went to work between six and seven in the morning and thrust corves with Josh Atkinson, who was ten, going home at three or six and eating her dinner at the pit mouth. They sometimes hurried twenty corves over a distance of 400 yards.

Geology

Unknown.

Workings

A day hole: a tunnel driven into the hillside rather than a shaft. Coal was hurried from the faces in corves, one pair of hurriers moving twenty corves a day over 400 yards and Barker's apprentices about seventeen.

Closure

Unknown.

What remains

Unknown.

Redevelopment

Unknown.

Related mines

• Booth Town Pit — Both were small Halifax pits worked by Joseph Stocks and listed together in Scriven's 1841 table of the district's collieries.
• Brown Top Pit — Both were small Halifax pits worked by Joseph Stocks and listed together in Scriven's 1841 table of the district's collieries.

Recorded claims

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

• Windy Bank was a day hole worked by a tunnel and owned by Joseph Stock in 1841. ¹
• The collier Joseph Barker had three apprentices bound to him until they were twenty-one, two hurriers and a getter, who hurried about seventeen corves a day. ¹
• Sally Fletcher, aged eight, had worked at the pit for just under three years and thrust corves with a ten-year-old boy, hurrying twenty corves over 400 yards. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Children's Employment Commission 1842: Report by Samuel S. Scriven on the collieries of the West Riding of Yorkshire — Coal Mining History Resource Centre (transcription)
2. (secondary) Pit Lasses Research: Halifax Area — Denise Bates

Record created: 29 September 2026 · Last researched: 1 October 2026