Coal Mining in Standish
From Standish Wiki
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As far back as 1350 the value of coal and cannel must have been appreciated in the Standish area: as when Margaret de Shuttleworth exchanged land with Robert de Standish, he reserved any secole (coal) and fyrestone (probably meaning cannel) found in that particular piece of ground. It was probably dug from the outcrops and used for various purposes such as smith's work, lime burning, malting etc.
Three gentlemen in 1635 lost their way amidst the old pits near Standish Hall. Whichever direction they took they were warned by the sniffing of their horses of “these tartarian Cells”. They were guided, they said, by the malodious sound of a sweet coronet through the woods leading from “this darksome haunted place to a stately fayre house of a gentleman that was High Sheriffe of that good rich shire this yeare, but that we understood that this house was that night full of strangers.”
The sheriff was Ralph Standish, and the house Standish Hall.
Coal had been continuously worked from that time and very probably before, until the Robin Hill Drift Mine closed in 1963. Ralph Standish was working the pits south of Standish Moor in 1653.
His grandson William Standish leased coal just over the township boundary in Shevington to Thomas Hesketh of Rufford in March 1685. He also leased the coal under three acres between Back Lane and Shevington Lane to Hesketh and previously on 10th October, 1679, before the death of his father Edward Standish he sold the top seams of coal (probably the only ones they had proved) under the Johns Fields on the east side of Back Lane, Shevington to Hugh Dicconson of Wrightington Hall. The price paid was £10, the seams were the King Coal, Cannel and Ravine, the area was immediately south of Park Plantation and SE of Wood's Farm House.
Dicconson was allowed the use of Standish's sough or watergate i.e. drainage tunnel, but he was restricted in the quantity of coal he could produce by the fact that during the first seven years he was allowed to employ only one getter for six months of each year, and two during the remaining six months.
Another deed grants John Thornton, yeoman of Wigan, power to bore, quarry for, sink pits and construct soughs for the getting of sandstone, cannel, coal, slate and flags. The deed is quaintly worded and begins “To all Christian People to whom these presents shall come, William Standish of Wigan in the County of Lancaster Esq., sendeth greetings in our Lord God Everlasting” It is dated 6th October 1698. [1]
- ↑ D.Anderson, J.Lane & A.A.France, The Standish Collieries (Published by D. Anderson. With thanks to Mr Anderson and his family for the right to reproduce parts of his publication.)
