Bygone Burnley: Bank Hall Colliery, with historian Roger Frost MBE

Local historian Roger Frost MBE shows reporter Dominic Collis around the site of the former coal mining pit, now occupied by the Brun Valley Forest Park.

Bank Hall Colliery, situated near to the River Brun and the Leeds Liverpool Canal, was sunk in the late 1860s and closed just over a century later in 1971.

In our video, which you can see here, Roger reveals the history of the pit, which was the town’s largest and deepest. He looks at a memorial, opened in 1990, which commemorates all of Burnley’s coal mines.

A photograph, reproduced here, shows Bank Hall Colliery in the top half of the image, and a bridge at Heasandford. In the foreground is the clay quarry for the Heasandford Brick Works which were to the left of the picture. The picture was taken in around 1958.

Another photo, featured in the video and taken around the same period, shows the coal sorting and grading apparatus at the pit.

Roger goes on to explain the significance of some of the remains including the Sandholme Aqueduct which carries the canal. On one of the arches are marked the times, years and heights of floods from the River Brun, which flooded badly in 1881.

After the mine closed the land was eventually turned into the Brun Valley Forest Park, which stretches over 130 hectares and links together 13 separate areas of open space now owned by Burnley Borough Council and Lancashire County Council.