I RECENTLY went down 140 metres underground, back in time to see the harsh realities of mining through the centuries. My journey took me to the Caphouse Colliery in Wakefield, which is now the National Coal Mining Museum.

It seems weird to have wheelchair access to a colliery, and it was a good job I had a strong friend to push my wheelchair and me through the dank tunnels.

There was another wheelchair user in our party, also having to put up with the obstacles of truck rail tracks, uneven floors, and the illumination from just the miner’s lamps.

Back in the café and shop I bought a booklet full of pictures of Lancashire collieries, called ‘Lancashire Collieries including Pit Brow Girls on old picture postcards’, and the photos of two local collieries.

Bold Colliery is gone. It belonged to the Collins Green Colliery Co. from 1875. It was situated on Bold Lane and was on the south side of the Liverpool to Manchester railway. Bold Moss was where its coal wastes were dumped. Bold Miners Welfare Club looked after the social side.

There was a disaster there in 1905, when five miners died. Five also died at New Boston that year. The coal seams mined included Rushy Park, Crombouke, Yard and Wigan 4ft. Soon after 1947 nationalisation, all coals were graded according to their heat, ash content and freeness of burning. By then most of the best St Helens coals had been used up and the gradings were at the latter end of the scale.

Bold Colliery fared best with 2 and 3. The colliery was sunk in 1876 and began to produce in 1880. By the 1930s two of the shafts went down to a depth of just over half a mile. A programme of deep boring by the National Coal Board in the 1950s led to the reconstruction of its old buildings.

By the late 1950s, it was producing more than 700,000 tons of coal, a lot of which went to the newly constructed Bold Power Station next door. It was closed in 1985, soon after the 1984 Coal Strike.

The postcard bearing the photo was posted in 1908.

There was a colliery railway that took the miners from just southeast of the Junction station to the pit. It’s marked on the old Ordnance Survey maps but I have never seen a photo. Steam locomotives disappeared from British Rail in 1968, but in 1983 two collieries still had working steam locomotives, Bold and Bickershaw. In 1980 ‘Robert’ took part in the Cavalcade to celebrate the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

The other photo is of Pewfall Colliery, near Ashton-in-Makerfield. Pewfall is that rural stretch beyond Haydock. The colliery was situated on the north side of Liverpool Road and was sunk by Samuel Clough.

Richard Evans bought the colliery from his executors after his death. The Mines Inspectors reported that the colliery employed 220 people and had four shafts in 1894. By the end of the century only two shafts were working. At its peak production the colliery raised 130,000 tons of coal per year. Pewfall colliery closed in 1911.

The postcard was posted in Haydock to a destination in Tranmere in 1909.