Located between the A580 and the Bridgewater Canal, at which former colliery now a museum, is the only surviving pit headgear and engine house in the Lancashire coalfield?
Astley Green Colliery Museum Astley Green Colliery Museum The Astley Green Colliery Museum is a museum run by the Red Rose Steam Society in Astley near Tyldesley in Greater Manchester, England. () Before becoming a museum, the site was a working colliery that produced coal from 1912 to 1970; it is now protected as a Scheduled Monument. The museum occupies a site by the Bridgewater Canal which has the only surviving pit headgear and engine house on the Lancashire Coalfield. Astley Green Colliery exploited deep coal seams of the Manchester Coalfield underneath the peat bog known as Chat Moss, and was driven by the
Gin Pit Colliery to the Bridgewater Canal at Marsland Green. In 1851 Darlington attempted to sell his colliery, tramroad, cranes and tipplers on the canal to the Bridgewater Trustees but the operation was sold to Samuel Jackson, a salt merchant and owner of a nearby colliery in Bedford. The colliery's single shaft was deepened to the Rams mine at 375 yards between 1866 and 1872 by Astley and Tyldesley Coal and Salt Company. It had a pumping engine built by the Haigh Foundry. In 1896 Gin Pit employed 240 underground and 55 surface workers producing household and steam coal and coal to produce