Mines on the moors

[mickmc]

Originally Posted by BLACKBURN RAVER

glad i stumbled upon this thread, i also wondered where moleside was so did a search and found a nice little walk called the hambledon hill loop, me thinks i will be making that treck sometime in the near future, isnt it surprising whats on your doorstep, and you dont even know about it

There are loads of wonderful walks all around us

[Tesco Rambler]

As a teenager I collected bags of coal from the mine site. There was a very definite area of pit-head spoil. There was also the extraction of oil baring shale from this site.
Higher up than the mine site on Moleside Moor itself are a number of smallish circular pits which are either very marshy or filled with water. As far as I am aware local historians have never come to a conclusions as to what they are even though I believe one was once excavated. I recall reading that there were references to mining in the area in Elizabethan times.
If you walk higher up again to the base of Hamledon Hill, just the other side of the field that is beyond the Kings Highway, is a very large and quite obvious mining spoil heap.

[Tesco Rambler]

Look, you can't go wrong (however I was last there in 2007): take the Kings Highway from Huncoat and walk up the hill which is quite steep from Burnley Road. Keep going and as you reach the top on your left there is lots of modern workings presumably for the Huncoat brick works. Keep walking up the well defined straight road with 3 to 5 ' banks on either side. The banks will become smaller and the clay road fairly straight. Eventually on your left set back from the road in some fields is a farm which by now may be a tip of old machines and trucks. Keep going up the well defined road (you must pass through a gate and you will be on the mores proper. There is no fence on the right but a wall on the left and the walking becomes a bit of an upward climb. After a while the track descends into a sort of dogleg curve and if you look you should see a style in the wall to your left. Follow the footpath over the style and keep going until you reach a wall which delineates the farmer's field from the moor of Hamildon Hill. In the farmer's field you will see the low ruins of an old farm. Go to the wall and look over it to the expanse of boggy ground which is the base of Hamildon hill. Use your eyes and you will see a large mound which is the spoil heap of an very old coal pit.

[davemac]

you are arguing over a 6 year old post, however the last two posts are yours so are you arguing with yourself ?

[Tesco Rambler]

Originally Posted by davemac

you are arguing over a 6 year old post, however the last two posts are yours so are you arguing with yourself ?

Hi,
I am not arguing but trying to help people find the mine site.

[Tesco Rambler]

Originally Posted by davemac

you are arguing over a 6 year old post, however the last two posts are yours so are you arguing with yourself ?

I often find discussions with myself lead to less friction.

[davemac]

Originally Posted by Tesco Rambler

Hi,
I am not arguing but trying to help people find the mine site.

But the last post was 2007, the people involved in the thread have long since moved on to other threads.

[Retlaw]

Originally Posted by Lance

I have just been wandering through www.www.webbaviation.co.uk
There is a srction on Accrington;
Here are a couple of photographs of an abandond mine on top of Moleside.
One is noted, the other one is in a photograph where the pilot/photographer says he was looking for evidence of where the PALS trained prior to WWII.
Could annyone enlighten me, I lived in accrington for 23 years, and heard nothing about these mines

Not another one about the Pals digging trenches on the Coppice, the PALS NEVER dug any trenches on the coppice, they were only seen once practicing trench digging on Moleside, all evidence of which is gone. Those ditches on the Coppice that some keep going on about were dug in 1939, when the panic of a German invasion by gliders was going round, if you look on that guggle urth thingy you can see the outine of 27 ditches. It was not just Accrington, similar ditches were dug all over the country during the early WW 2 years, they shut our school, for a week, put gas detectors up in the streets, they were stiil repainting them every 3 months in 1943, we were all issued with identity cards and gas masks, & woe betide you if a copper saw you without your cardboard box on a string, then they spent a lot of money on air raid shelters & pill boxes, which were only ever used to store bonfire wood.
Incidentally you quote the PALS trained prior to WWII.
What Pals would that be then
Just seen the comments about the age of the first post, missed it first time round.

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by davemac

But the last post was 2007, the people involved in the thread have long since moved on to other threads.

Shushhhhhhh Dave you'll wake him up

[TubbyLes]

Moleside had "open cast mining" ie. the coal was near the surface,no deep shafts.