A NEW heritage route around the former Sutton Manor Colliery site is being launched.
The Northwest Miners Heritage Association has teamed up with Landscape Legacies of Coal to bring a new 3-mile walking route to St Helens.
The route can be accessed via the Landscape Legacies of Coal app. It highlights various points of interest around the site.
Walkers will be able to access old photographs of the pit, as well as interesting facts about Sutton Manor’s mining history and information about the Dream installation.
Jim Housley was a miner at Sutton Manor Colliery until it closed in 1991.
Now an artist, Jim worked with a representative from the University of Stirling to help develop the walk.
“We’ve started off with the Sutton walk but we want to look at doing others over time – Bold, Clock Face, Lea Green.
“An interesting part of the walk is at Sutton Manor park – where the car park is, there used to be a signal box and the railway went across the road, connected to Lea Green, and then went onto the main line to Liverpool.
"A bridge carried the railway over Walkers Lane at the far end of the park, so we’ve got an old map that shows that and how it connected to the Runcorn Gap.”
Other points of interest along the route include the original National Coal Board gates and the old shaft sites.
Historic images of Sutton Manor and the land around it
Miners would take two tallies, one aluminium and one brass, which bore their identification number.
The aluminium tally would be handed in to the banksman at the pit top, and the brass one hung onto each miner’s belt and handed in upon exit.
Historic images of Sutton Manor and the land around it
Archive images of land surrounding the pit site
This system was in place to check that everyone got out safely – the brass would not burn in case of a fire or explosion in the pit, allowing the bodies below to be identified.
The walking route is currently still in development, though keen walkers can access an incomplete beta version now.
The Landscape Legacies of Coal app can be downloaded for free from the Apple Store or the Google Play Store.
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