Hill Top Colliery

Hill Top was one of six short-life drift mines sunk by the NCB to work small, but readily got areas of coal in the Burnley area.

The Lower Mountain Mine outcrops along the northern and eastern flanks of Thieveley Pike and was worked by opencasting in the immediate post-war years. Owing to the rising ground, however, it became necessary to follow the seam underground. At Hill Top there was a virgin area of the Union Mine, which here was four feet thick, so in 1948 the board began driving two drifts from Green’s Clough at the eastern end of Heald Moor. The Return Drift was 339 metres long at a gradient of 1 in 4, while the Intake Drift was 78 metres long at 1 in 1½.

Because they were shallow, the first workings were a series of elongated boards separated by narrow pillars. This prevented subsidence damage at the surface. Most of the coal was got from 15 advancing longwall faces with an average length of 72 metres.

Under the Coal Board, Hill Top employed an annual average of 101 men underground and 9 on the surface between 1950 and 1965, with the last face line dated 28/01/1966 as record of its closure.

Hill Top’s return drift was reopened in 1996 and has been worked on a small scale since.