Hapton Valley Colliery was a coal mine on the edge of Hapton near Burnley in Lancashire, England. Its first shafts were sunk in the early 1850s and it had a life of almost 130 years, surviving to be the last deep mine operating on the Burnley Coalfield.
Geology
The Burnley Coalfield, separated from the South Lancashire Coalfield, is in the form of an oval bowl extending north-east from Blackburn, past Colne to the Pennine Hills. Bounded by the Pendle monocline to the north and the Rossendale Valley anticline to the south, the coalfield is dissected by a series of predominately north-westerly trending faults, the most significant fault is the Cliviger Valley Fault at Burnley with a throw of up to in Cliviger valley. The intersecting Theiveley Lead Mine Fault is one of a smaller number of easterly aligned structures. Unlike South Lancashire, only the Lower Westphalian coal measures are available. The hills above are formed of Carboniferous sandstones, ranging from millstone grits to finer grained stone such as the Dyneley Knott flags and the Dandy Mine Rock. The drift cover consists primarily of glacial till deposits, which cause poor-drainage soils.
Hapton Valley worked the Upper Mountain and Lower Mountain / Union seams in a syncline that extends from the Thieveley Fault, north-west to Higham where it outcrops. The area is split centrally by the Deerplay Fault with a throw of up to , which runs from White Hill (near Crown Point), under the eastern side of Hameldon Hill and Burnley's Lowerhouse district. The coal extracted from the Upper and Lower Mountain seams was ideal for producing high grade metallurgical coke which was in high demand in industry.
Early history
Beginning in 1853 at Spa Wood, two shafts where sunk to a depth of for the Exors of John Hargreaves Ltd. The site was on a spit of land between Hapton and Habergham Cloughs, just south of where they combine to form Green Brook. The shafts were on the north-west side of the Deerplay fault and although the Lower Mountain mine was reached, the pit was sunk in an area where it merges with the Upper Foot mine. The difficult geological conditions led to both shafts being partially filled, and the Upper Mountain mine being worked. Coal was transported underground, raised to the surface and delivered onwards on a network of tram roads, known locally as ginny roads or tracks, by wheeled iron tubs drawn by an endless-chain system which was driven by a stationary steam engine. The tubs ran along circuits made of 22 inch gauge, angle-iron tracks but as the seam only averaged in height, shorter tubs with half the capacity were used underground. Two drifts cut into the hillside connected the underground system to the surface and provided access for the miners.
On the surface, the ginny track delivered the coal to a coking plant at Barclay Hills Colliery to the northeast, and ultimately connected to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Gannow in Burnley. By 1868, the underground tracks had reached and in length and about 370 tonnes of coal per day was raised. but sometime later, problems with faulting and water ingress led to mining being stopped.
Expansion
In the 1880s the shafts were increased in diameter and larger pumping equipment was installed and mining resumed by 1890. The horizontal, condensing steam engine powered four bucket-lifts but a system of specially designed automatic fill and empty barrels was also employed to raise 1,000,000 gallons of water per day from the workings. By 1908 work had commenced on two new shafts (No. 3 and No. 4) 200 metres north-west. They were completed to a depth of by 1910. Manpower was transferred from the old site, with Spa Pit (No.1) closing in 1935. No. 2 shaft continued to be used for pumping. In the early 1940s a small surface drift was driven from Thorney Bank Clough behind the Hapton Inn to speed-up access for the miners.