Great news George. I am glad I have been of help.

This is a very interesting and yet puzzling subject. As far as I can tell the actual upcast shaft is situated in the yard in front of the Bings Road enginehouse. It is marked on the mining plan for the 16 Inch Seam (also known as the White Ash or Smithy Mine) in the 1870s. Normally the furnace would be ventilated to atmosphere via a built up top to the shaft to take the fumes away and to avoid people falling in. However, at one time this was clearly a winding shaft, indeed it may date back to the founding of the colliery in 1815. The enginehouse is certainly very old and judging by the layout it contained a vertical winder with the drum mounted above the cylinder. If you look at the front wall of the building there is a bricked-up gap beneath a wooden lintel. The brickwork fill a lower slot at the right side of the gap. This slot was to allow the winding rope to run out from under the drum whilst the top rope would run through the main slot. A headgear would have been attached directly to the front of the building.

None of the architectural clues is conducive to the chimney being over a shaft for ventilation purposes. I wonder whether it was more likely the boiler chimney for the winding engine? Another possibility is that the fumes from the ventilation furnace were conducted to the chimney via a tunnel from the shaft, which would have been divided into winding and ventilation sections with timber. It's all very cramped and difficult to fit it all in on such a tight site. If only we had a photo that clearly showed the pithead area. That tree on the Christ Church photo is just in the wrong place!

tarboat attached the following image(s):

Tarboat,  thank you for posting that mine plan, and your analysis of the structure. Most interesting. Got any more?

Do you have a key to the colour coding on the plan?

Regards

RB

It certainly set me thinking. Clearly a much later image and it shows the slot that is now occupied by the wooden doors just below the right side of the bricked-up rope window. If that is an original feature it could well have been for a pumping beam. Many of the early vertical winders were also capable of driving pumps, the one at the Oval Pit at Poynton certainly did so via a beam that emerged in a similar place on the front wall of the enginehouse. I have attached a photo of the Oval Pit (c1935-6 after closure) that shows the layout with the headframe attached to the front wall of the building. In that case the top winding rope emerged through a raised piece in the roof.

Do you have any idea of the date and would it be possible to post a higher resolution view of the enginehouse bit of the photo?

tarboat attached the following image(s):

R.S-S.   I too would like to see photos of the Furness tramway. So  far I have not been able to trace any but who knows.

  The booklet just published by F.V.History Society "Memories of Furness Vale" by Mabel Townend describes the working of the line as she remembers it. "It was a single track - rails 12 or 15 inches apart. Clay came up from the siding in tipper trucks, about 3ft by 2ft, five at a time, pulled by a strong cable at low level. When the empty trucks came back down, we tried to throw in stones, often we missed as the empties came quite fast. Down too came flat trucks with a back and front but no sides. These were filled with finished firebacks and firebricks ready to be loaded onto the main line trucks in the siding. The cable was worked by a pulley system, which included an overhead cable running on horizontal pulleys attached to a strong wooden structure. We knew when the trucks were coming as the overhead cable would be heard making a soft clicking noise."

Hi,

Mr Anonymouse has posted me another picture for this thread.

This a picture of Shallcross Hall Colliery taken in 1908. Many thanks for providing it.

Cheers

Jon.

JonG attached the following image(s):