Astley Green Colliery: A Photo Poem

Astley Green Colliery, just off the East Lancashire Road and bordering Chat Moss, where George Stephenson "floated" his railway on straw and concrete, is a fine remnant of the Industrial Age. I have been many times and the work that the volunteers have done to preserve it is nothing short of remarkable. Built relatively late in 1908 it only lasted 62 years, but in that time it provided not just thousands of tons of coal to help to power early 20th Century Britain, but also a living for thousands of local people until its closure in 1970.

But there is another, much sadder story beneath the much-loved relic that it has become, for on the 6th June 1939 an undergound explosion claimed the lives of 5 men and injured 5 others, an event that is memorialised to this day on the site and in the recollections of many of the older people who volunteer there.

These photos tell the story of it as it is now, while the poem I wrote to accompany it is an attempt to connect what remains of the buildings and machinery with that tragedy. On photographing the colliery I had a strong sense of the large wheeled pithead (the last one standing in Lancashire) being a sort of Mother to all who worked there who relied on her for sustenance, hence the "sons" metaphor. In addition, the position of the large engine house connected to the pithead, with the blood-red and polished winding engine inside, behind cracked and oil-covered glass and the clanging and banging noise it made me when the volunteers ran it (sadly on compressed air these days) made me think that it would be interesting to use the metaphor of it calling the names of those who died, hence that reference too.

It's a personal passion project of course, but I hope you enjoy it and if you ever get a chance to visit the site I would highly recommend it. The website is here: https://lancashireminingmuseum.org/

With slender limbs she gave her sons,

A thousand souls, five towers deep,

Then brought them home to evening hearths,

where coal was twice the price of peat.

And when for half a mile they fell,

The cages that they knew so well,

Grumbled and groaned,

And wept For a memory of light,

That once grew trees,

Made leaves turned green,

And forged from all their bones a deep black seam

But in the glass her heart still marks,

Each day the bloodied walls with beats,

That thunder, and rage,

And whisper,

And keep,

Alive, the names of five who sleep.

by

Darren Birchall,

in memory of the men who were died and injured in the 1939 mining disaster.