Birdforth Colliery, Carlton Husthwaite
There is no clear pattern of variation in seam thickness, but the thickest seams appear to lie to the north of the belt of maximum deposition of the Ravenscar Group, roughly from Ravenscar to Kepwick. Nevertheless, the thickest known coal was at Birdforth, well to the south of the belt of maximum deposition. It appears, therefore, that the thicker seams formed on the flanks of the subsiding basin, rather than in the middle (Hemingway and Riddler).
At Birdforth a graben, formed by two converging faults here about 2/3rds of a mile apart, contains amongst others the Long Nab Member. The latter is stratigraphically immediately above the Moor Grit, which is apparently missing here, and had two seams. The upper was 11 to 16 inches thick and the lower, near its base, reportedly reached a maximum thickness of from three to four feet thick (Fox-Strangways, 1892).
There is a comprehensive collection of accounts for Birdforth Colliery between 1796 and 1798 in the North Yorkshire Record Office, which details expenditure and sales income, as well as giving employment and production records. John Owen used them to write his paper The Moor Coal of North Yorkshire: The Thirsk Area, which gives a detailed account of events over a four or five-year period of working (Owen, 1970a). These accounts would, however, repay re-examination in greater detail.
The earliest reference to mining was that “The colliery began to sink a pit for coals in the summer of 1791” 1. This was probably the shaft later referred to as “An old pit found by Mr [John] Horner 12 yards deep the Coal seam in it 14 inches”. There was also “A pitt called Barugh far pitt [which] was sunk by Mr Horner 29 yards deep”. Soon afterwards, the farmer, G. Barker, was “Abated 4/- per acre”, presumably for surface damage done by the colliery.
The dip of the seam and the quantity of water met, soon made a steam pumping engine necessary. The cost of running such an engine probably made the mine uneconomic, however, and Horner had apparently given it up by 05/02/1796, when Lord Downe, the lord of the manor, took it over. Owen noted an item for “Coals bought of Horner when repairing the Engine” and suggested that he “was, in fact, still working a mine in that area”. It seems unlikely that this pit was at Birdforth, but it may have been at Kilburn, where Horner lived. He also had lead mining interests at Greenhow Hill, in Nidderdale, and at Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, and was involved with a colliery near Durham (1998; ND).
Luke Plummer, Lord Downe’s overseer, set the men to raise coal, sank new pits and searched for coal down-dip of the working. Between February and July 1797, two men were prospecting the area by boring. Their first hole reached shale after being bored through 32 feet of clay. The rods were impeded by stones, however, and it was necessary to sink a pit 33 feet to the rockhead, with the intention of boring from there. They found that the beds were rising “west by north”, convincing them that the coal would have been deeper than could be drained from the engine pit, so they gave up.
In 1808 a company headed by John Horner traded as the Leadhills Mining Company, took over the lease on Brow vein. Their next hole, which was nearer the workings, reached a depth of 157 feet when the shell came off the rods and could not be recovered, forcing them to abandon the hole. They had penetrated 21 feet into a bed of freestone, which they called the Middle Rock, and estimated that the hole was 45 feet short of the seam, giving a total expected depth of 202 feet.
In December 1797 ten men were getting coal at Smithson’s Little Pit where, in the week of December 29th to January 6th 1798 “The pit fell in on Monday morning and the men only got one day to work on Saturday and then were set on to open it again so there was only 15 dozen and 8 corves of coals to put on this bill and the remainder of the week they were opening the pit”. The pit was working again on the following Tuesday.
Faced with rising losses, the engine was stopped on October 22nd 1797, having burnt some 1560 chaldrons of coal since Lord Downe took over. It then only worked for a few days in 1798 when the pit was drained in order to remove the pumps etc. All work stopped on April 9th 1798.
- NYCRO ZDS IV 1/1/3 – frame 1325
