Monument Type(s):

• COLLIERY (Early 19th century to Early 20th century (pre-war) - 1800 AD to 1913 AD)

Summary

A 19th to 20th century colliery.

Related records

Associated Finds: None recorded

Associated Events: None recorded

Description

Moreton Hall Colliery, next to and probably served by the GWR, with tramway/railway connecting colliery to Shropshire Union Canal (PRN 03414) at SJ 2995 7335 <1>

Earthworks-colliery appears to be disused. <2>

Earthworks; buildings-uses not indicated; line of tramway shown as path. <3><4>

The new colliery was named after Moreton Hall and seems to have been established in the 1850’s, benefitting from the opening of the railway. There was also a new private tramway running east from the mine in a straight line for about 650m to an existing wharf complex on the Ellesmere Canal at Moreton Bridge where it was crossed by the Holyhead Road. The original partners in the mine were Edward Williams, George Bloomer and Matthew Frost, but Williams left in 1858. The links between the two remaining partners were presumably strengthened when Matthew Frost married Bloomer’s daughter, Prudence, in May 1859. However the partnership was dissolved in 1861 and the Moreton Hall Colliery was taken over by the next of a series of short lived partnerships. ->

-> Conflicting reports in the local newspapers make it difficult to assess how successful the colliery was; by the 1860s it had effectively been combined with the Preesgwynne Colliery to the north and in 1868 it was announced in the Wrexham Advertiser that ‘The Moreton Hall and Preesgwyn Colliery Company, Chirk, North Wales [sic.], have a pair of new Horizontal Winding ENGINES to dispose of’ which had ‘not been on the company’s premises more than one month, and had not yet been erected’. That would suggest the colliery had financial problems but considerable investment was made by its new owners, the Blackwells, in sinking new shafts at the Preesgwynne colliery in 1870 and in the same paper in September 1873 an article mentioned the ‘Moreton Hall Colliery, which is giving large returns to its proprietors’. The surface buildings of the colliery are shown on the 1st edition of the 6” and 1:2500 Ordnance Survey maps – published in the early-1880s but surveyed in 1874; there is a large spoil heap to the south and an embankment to the east of the main working area. Curiously, no siding linked to the Shrewsbury & Chester railway is shown and it seems that there was also no track on the tramway running to the canal wharf either – though the track bed is clearly shown, as is the wharf. The tramway, therefore, was either never completed or was very short lived. ->

-> The colliery struggled on but in September 1886 the Chester Courant advertised the auction of ‘the whole of the ENGINES, BOILERS, STEAM AND WATER PIPES, WEIGHING MACHINES, CAGES, PIT BOXES, MACHINERY, TOOLS, TIMBER and STORES’ at the Moreton Hall Colliery, which had clearly gone bankrupt. <5>

Sources

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