The debate about the deepest coalmine in St Helens

Alan Whalley kept St Helens smiling over four decades as he served up a magic menu of larger than life characters and nuggets of nostalgia every week with his sublime storytelling skill.

Alan passed away last October, but we’re sure he’d be tickled pink to know his award winning words were making a timely comeback to the Star’s pages to inject a little cheer in these unprecedented days.

This week’s piece from the archives of 1998 sees Star readers – who followed the column online – sharing some of their Sintellins memories.

TWO readers, living half a globe apart, have chipped in with response to a couple of yedscratters concerning coalmine depths and the old Hippodrome Cinema, now converted into a bingo hall.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, a couple of former sons of St Helens have ventured their opinions from New Zealand and from Canada.

Sending greetings from NZ, Geoff Davies picks up on the ‘deepest-down’ coal mine question, writing: “Take your pick – Sutton Manor, Clock Face or Bold.

“My uncle, Harold Lomax, worked down Clock Face, while I was employed at various times down Sutton Manor, Bold and Ravenhead.” Adds Geoff: “As I recollect, Sutton Manor was a thousand yards.

We used to go down 1-Pit then a further hundred down a sub-shaft to cross-connect to Clock Face. The climb – as I remember, Clock Face was not as deep as Sutton Manor – was arduous because the mine had been closed for some years and the tunnels were not well maintained.

“We used to go in there to Looking Back 22 July 30, 2020 special feature check on the condition of the few remaining items of electrical equipment and I believe that this exercise was discontinued around 1970.

“Sutton Manor’s deepest seam was probably Peacock, at around 1,400 yards. It was a nice seam (about two yards high) unlike Ravenhead, the first mine I worked in, where I recall a seam called Flaggy Delf, at 28 inches in height.”

Geoff spent six weeks down Haydock at the start of his apprenticeship in 1963. It was 600 yards to the training gallery. The main mine had been closed for some years, but Geoff remembers being told that this had been not much more than 1,000 yards deep.

And he signs off emphatically: “If anyone tells you that Sherdley was the deepest, then just forget it! I used to service the pumps down there and it was about 100 yards deeper than Ravenhead No. 11.

“The shaft,” adds Geoff, “is probably still there.” (Anyone able to confirm this?)

“There was a high brick wall around it. And, as kids, we used to throw stones over the top to A tale from the Whalley’s World archives... see how long it took for them to splash to the bottom.”

NOW, let’s jet over to PointeClair in Quebec, to pick up an answer on the Hippodrome subject from Wallace Orme.

He has been reading about the Hippodrome and the Donkey Common district wanted to give us his “penny’s worth.”

From telephone conversations with his sister, Wallace has ascertained that the Hippodrome was transformed from theatre to cinema in the early 1940s.

He adds: “My sister also reminded me that the nickname of Donkey Common, for Thatto Heath, originates from a time when the heath there was used for the grazing of those animals.”

And Wallace happily informs me: “I read Whalley’s World every week on the Internet and am always on the lookout for news of the St Helens of the Terra Cotta years.”

MUST admit that that particular pottery term beats me! Any other reader know what he means by Terra Cotta era?

I’m grateful to both of those farflung correspondents for all the fascinating details supplied.