My bucket photo poser attracted some interesting replies including tales of a terrorist plot to blow up the pylons that supported the cables for the bucket transporting sand from Rainford!

Geoff Sandford of the Road Transport Museum wrote: “I remember the buckets that went across the Rainford bypass. They collected sand with little trains, put them in the buckets, and sent them to the sand wash in Mill Lane at Rainford. They were then taken by train to Pilks along the rail line from Rainford to St. Helens, via Crank and Moss Bank. Your photo of the buckets is looking towards Rainford village. The large structure is where it crosses the Rainford Bypass.

“There was an 8.30am sand train every weekday and it caused traffic problems at Moss Bank level crossing. I recall Suttons had sand lorries going to Washway Lane from Rainford as well.”

John Howard recalled: “Around 1954-58 when I was aged 11-15, I used to help out on Rawlinson’s farm at Rainford. Marlow Wright, a few years older than me, worked at the farm and we kept pigeons on the City Road plots.

“The buckets went over the fields that belonged to Rawlinson’s farm, and then turned around at a cabin that had been built for maintenance. The building is still there at the end of Moss Lane in the middle of the fields.

I remember farmer, Mr Smith, who must have been in his 80s, telling us he once found IRA men trying to blow up pylons that carried the buckets and they threatened him with a gun.”

Les Brooks, aged 81, from Haydock, remembers his high wire coal bucket act as a 17 year-old apprentice at Haydock Foundry. Les rang to say after the coal was washed the buckets carried away waste slurry and travelled along a thick steel rope, to which a tipping device was fitted. One day the device jammed and Les had to fix it.

Stanchions supporting the cables were one hundred foot high, and Les had to climb up, attach the safety belt to the other cable, and make his way along the main cable slowly until he could reach and repair the device. A colleague followed with a rope, and when Les had finished, his mate lowered the end of the rope to the ground so that Les could descend to the ground without going back along the cable!

Richard Waring, a Parrer in Yickerland, writes: “The buckets you mention near the Wood Pit (behind which is now Moore Drive, Haydock) were, I believe, for bringing coal from Lyme Pit to the Wood Pit because the Lyme Pit had no coal washing facilities. So the pylons and suspended wire rope ways were built to transport the coal to Wood Pit for washing. This created the slag heaps of waste which have only recently been reshaped and partly levelled.

“There are over 35,000 trees covering what was the Wood Pit site. I haven’t heard a skylark since the trees grew. It’s strange to think that here 189 miners lost their lives in the Wood Pit explosion of 1878 which at that time was the worst accident in the Lancashire Coalfield.

“I don’t remember any of the bucket lines going over Common Road (Brew). Hope some reader can clarify this. In that direction it would have crossed the branch line that was built to the old racecourse! I think it was built by Richard Evans, so he must have had mining rights from Haydock to Common Road, Earlestown? I am not sure how the canal ties up with transporting coal from the pits of Haydock. “Maybe some readers can fill in the gaps. I do remember reading that Richard Evans paid for Vista Road to be surfaced at his own cost. This was possibly because up to then all the coal was brought up what is now Grange Valley and past his house!

“So if Richard Evans had not lived in Grange Valley, would we be using a road running from Common Road to Haydock via Grange Valley? Being a Parr lad in exile in Haydock, I didn’t know the area well before the 1940s, so maybe some owd Yickers can help out?”

  • Newton has a Historic Society that meets monthly in the local library. As far as I know, Haydock does not have such a group, maybe those interested should have a word with their local branch library.