Adam.L.
Serenade in Black
The magnificent No.1 pit headgear of Astley Green colliery, now the Lancashire Mining Museum.
Completed in 1911, it stands 30 meters or 98ft high and was built using wrought iron lattice girders with rivetted plates at the joints, weighing in at 120 tons.
However she stands on the edge of a dark future.
Her ironwork is rusting, having spent almost 50 years with no maintainence, and her brick foundation is crumbling.
But the volunteers who run this fantastic museum are not taking any risks! They are trying their hardest to raise the money to save this Scheduled ancient monument, putting on numerous public events and even hand building a miniature railway to run the museum's large collection of colliery rolling stock!
This 108 year old lady may have spent the last 50 years in decline, but with the hope of volunteers and the public alike, she'll soon be repaired and a shining example of this lost era of Lancashire's history, she is afterall, the last headgear on the Lancashire coalfield, where at one time you could stand on hill and see atleast a dozen!
Serenade in Black
The magnificent No.1 pit headgear of Astley Green colliery, now the Lancashire Mining Museum.
Completed in 1911, it stands 30 meters or 98ft high and was built using wrought iron lattice girders with rivetted plates at the joints, weighing in at 120 tons.
However she stands on the edge of a dark future.
Her ironwork is rusting, having spent almost 50 years with no maintainence, and her brick foundation is crumbling.
But the volunteers who run this fantastic museum are not taking any risks! They are trying their hardest to raise the money to save this Scheduled ancient monument, putting on numerous public events and even hand building a miniature railway to run the museum's large collection of colliery rolling stock!
This 108 year old lady may have spent the last 50 years in decline, but with the hope of volunteers and the public alike, she'll soon be repaired and a shining example of this lost era of Lancashire's history, she is afterall, the last headgear on the Lancashire coalfield, where at one time you could stand on hill and see atleast a dozen!