Damps
Damps is a collective name given to all gases other than air found in coal mines in Great Britain. The chief pollutants are carbon dioxide and methane, known as blackdamp and firedamp respectively.
Bedford Colliery explosion
Explosion of firedamp on Friday 13 August 1886 which caused the deaths of 38 miners at Bedford No. 2 Pit in Leigh, on the Lancashire Coalfield.
Coal mining terms
This is a partial glossary of common coal mining terms used in the United Kingdom. Some words were in use throughout the coalfields, some are historic and others are local to the different British coalfields.
Fairbottom Bobs
Fairbottom Bobs, an 18th-century Newcomen-type beam engine, was used to pump water from a coal pit near Ashton-under-Lyne, is probably the world’s second-oldest surviving steam engine.
Huskar Pit Disaster
Deaths of 26 boys and girls working underground, drowned by an overflowing stream.
Great Boys Colliery
Great Boys Colliery in Tyldesley was a coal mine operating on the Manchester Coalfield in the second half of the 19th century in Lancashire, England.
Edward Ormerod
English mining engineer and inventor who worked at Gibfield Colliery in Atherton, Lancashire where he devised and tested his safety device, the Ormerod safety link or detaching hook.
The Walking Horse locomotive
Lancashire’s first steam locomotive, built by Robert Daglish in 1812 at the Haigh Foundry for colliery owner, John Clarke; it entered service the following year.
Mining disasters in Lancashire
Mining disasters in Lancashire in which five or more people were killed occurred most frequently in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s.
Mines rescue
Specialised job of rescuing miners and others who have become trapped or injured in underground mines because of accidents, roof falls or floods and disasters such as explosions caused by firedamp.