Bygone Burnley: Bank Hall Colliery

Bygone Burnley: Bank Hall Colliery, with Roger Frost 18-11-24

Transcript

00:00We're standing in the grounds of what once was Burnley's biggest colony, this was Bankville Colony.

00:08And behind me is the Burnley Miners' Memorial which was opened in 1990.

00:17It doesn't just commemorate the miners who worked here.

00:22Burnley had lots of coal mines, some of them very small, but others were substantial.

00:28The miners provided some of the money, that's the union.

00:35The National Coal Board, which doesn't exist now, provided more funding.

00:41And Burnley Council provided the land and also contributed to the fund.

00:48We're now in the remains of what was Bankville Colony.

00:53The buildings to the right are all built of stone and this here is a sign that it was industrial.

01:02But the whole area is full of the remains of the colliery.

01:07The colliery itself was started in 1867 and it lasted for just over 100 years.

01:13It was about 1970 when the colliery was closed down.

01:18But there are lots of remains, the whole of the site has been made into a really interesting park,

01:24which should be better known than it actually is.

01:28Just to give you an idea of some of the features, in the background there is the Sandholme Aqueduct that carries the canal.

01:38On one of the arches are marked out the times and the years and the height of floods.

01:47The River Brougham, as you can see, is in the area.

01:51It rises very quickly and in 1881 the whole of the Bridge Street area of Burnley was flooded.

02:01Reports in the paper full of descriptions of the work that had been undertaken on rebuilding some of the buildings

02:13was undermined by the Brougham, destroying the work that the builders had just completed.