The Winter Hill quarrying disaster 3
Winter Hill
Winter Hill is part of a spur of the West Pennine Moors reaching Westwards towards the Lancashire coast. To the South and South West lies the whole of the South Lancashire Plain. There are no other significant hills until the mountains of Wales and to the South East, the main Pennine chain. It is therefore an important natural landmark visible from a considerable distance in all directions but especially from the South and South West. Much of it is Green Belt within the Southern Pennines National Character Area and the Upland Moorland Hills Landscape Character Area and is mainly characterised as large-scale, open sweeping landscape providing extensive views. Its 'plateau' rises to some 1,500 feet and is mostly moorland of blanket peat and heathland, and lower down, upland pastures with drystone walls. Throughout the week the environs of Winter Hill are popular with walkers, cyclists and horse riders, especially Rivington Pike, Two Lads Hill and the summit area around the transmitting station, and is easily accessible on foot from Bolton and Horwich. This will only increase in the coming years.
The topography of Winter Hill is a product of repeated glaciations over 2.5 million years when ice from the southern Lake District covered the West Pennines. The high moorland is underlain with Carboniferous rocks, the Millstone Grit, sandstones and shales of the Lower Coal Measures which rise high above the Lancashire Plain to the west and the Greater Manchester conurbation to the south. The humped shape of the summit coincides with a coal seam of the Lower Coal Measures at around 1148 feet (350 m) that outcropped and was mined in about 1800. There is evidence of bell pits close to the summit.
The land is divided between the three boroughs of Chorley, Blackburn with Darwen, and Bolton. On the southeast side of Winter Hill is the Smithills Estate, now managed by the Woodland Trust. It is the largest site the Woodland Trust has ever acquired in England and is currently undergoing restoration. The estate stretches from the outskirts of Bolton upwards as far as the Winter Hill Transmitting Station, Crooked Edge Hill (1,230 ft), Adam Hill (1,181 ft) and White Brow (1,175 ft). The height of Rivington Pike is 1,191 ft.
The Smithills Estate (boundary shown red).
Winter Hill was the site of a mass trespass in 1896 when 10,000 people marched from Bolton to the open countryside in a mass demonstration after the owner of the Smithills Hall estate, Colonel Richard Henry Ainsworth tried to stop public access. The trespass is commemorated by a memorial stone on Coal Pit Road below Smithills Moor. Much of Winter Hill and the surrounding moorland area is now open access land with a right to roam.
A local man, Dave Lane, has collected a great deal of fascinating information about Winter Hill through the ages for his excellent Winter Hill Scrapbook. Extracts:
"On a clear day, the view from the top of Winter Hill is quite an eye opener for those who have never seen the view before. Looking South, the whole of the Cheshire plain is clearly in view with Mow Cop in Staffordshire as the limit. The Welsh mountains are clearly visible to the South West with Snowdon sticking up right in the middle. Anglesey and the Great Orme at Llandudno can clearly be seen. Liverpool Bay, with the Seaforth Cranes at Liverpool (along with the offshore gas rigs) are in view as are Southport (with it’s distinctive water tower), Blackpool Tower and we can see North as far as Black Combe in Cumbria.
"Winter Hill, and the surrounding upland areas, have not always been as bare and empty as they now appear. At one time they were forested and contained many different types of trees and bushes as has been proved by pollen analysis and pollen dating tests done on the moorland. So what happened to change things?
"The process of deforestation started as soon as human settlements began in the area. The natural resources provided by the forest provided building materials, fuel and to a lesser extend food for the settlements. Early inhabitants may have cleared extensive areas of forest around their settlements for simple agriculture. Demands for more basic materials and increased areas for agriculture would have led to a joining up of clearings to create large open tracts of moorland. One pollen analysis investigation of Winter Hill showed a clearly defined woodland clearance of the area in the Norse period, followed by considerable woodland regeneration thought to be through the Middle Ages. It is possible that the original clearance could have been earlier, perhaps even Roman, but I have as yet not managed to get hold of the carbon datings that were carried out at Harwell for this investigation."
Probably the "earliest" find in the Winter Hill area is the stone axe that was discovered lying in the bed of the river Douglas in Tigers Clough by a Mr Southworth of Anderton, The axe was about six inches in length and was highly polished and after expert advice had been obtained, it was found that the stone probably originated in Scandinavia and was from the period around 2,500 BC. To my knowledge this is the earliest item ever found on Winter Hill.
The only other early remains found on the hill are the two “burial mounds” discovered near the peak of the hill, both thought to date from around the Bronze Age, and indicative that somewhere in the area was a settlement (or settlements) dating from this era.
Winter Hill, especially on the southern side, was once extensively mined for coal. The coal mining activities were so great that that the higher slopes on the Horwich side of the hill are virtually "hollow" except for pillars of coal that were left "in situ" in the mines to stop total roof collapse.
Mines on the Hill included, Montcliffe Colliery, Mountain Mine, Wilderswood and Wildersmoor Collieries, Burnt Edge Colliery, Winter Hill Mine and many other smaller enterprises. The coal seams outcropped at various places on the hill and initially local people would dig away at these points to hew easily obtainable fuel, both for personal use and for sale. Many of these enterprises may have been only one man digging on his own, but others may have been groups of men or a family working on the outcrop. Many of these mines were probably only of small size and would soon be abandoned because of air problems, flooding, roof collapse or other reasons. Because of the small nature of these workings, there is little obvious evidence of this type of working left on the moor.
With thanks to Dave Lane.
Landscape value
The natural environment is a capital asset providing multiple benefits. For local communities, the benefits include enhanced wellbeing, outdoor recreation and access, and enhanced biodiversity. The prominence and proximity of Winter Hill to established communities is a natural capital asset at all levels. From a distance it contributes to a sense of place for the people of Horwich and Bolton, while at the same time is enjoyed daily by walkers and walking groups, runners and running groups, horse riders and horse riding groups and is also popular with cyclists. There is nowhere comparable to the South West round to the South East across the lowlands of Greater Manchester, Derbyshire, Cheshire and Lancashire until the hills of Wales or the Pennine chain.
The Winter Hill Quarries
Map dated 1845 to 1847.
The map from 125 years ago shows a scattering of small sandstone quarries, coal mines and gravel pits worked, presumably, by the 'enterprises' Dave Lane refers to in the Winter Hill Scrapbook – small groups of men or families supplying the town of Horwich with stone for building, coal for heating and steam engines together with other useful minerals as the local community developed. Delf means excavation in the dialect of the time. Ridgway Delf still exists as an old abandoned quarry on the path up from 'Arcon Village' – at one time Wallsuches bleach works. The streams running down off the moor enabled cloth to be washed and bleached and although the activity was small in scale it contained the elements that would lead to the transformation of Horwich led by the Ridgway family.
Sandstone from Ridgway Delf was used in the building of Wallsuches bleach works and the family assisted with the building of Horwich Parish Church School in 1793 and the re-building of the Parish Church in 1830.
The Wallsuches Conservation Area extends almost from the centre of Horwich up to George's Lane and down across Chorley Old Road to include Ridgmont Cemetary, Ridgmont Park and Ridgmont House, built in 1800 as the home of Thomas Ridgway.
A small quarry named Dairy Hole is shown where the modern (and vast) Montcliffe Quarry now exists and a very small quarry, Pilkington Delf, is more or less on the site of the modern Pilkington Quarry. In the modern age, quarrying machinery in Montcliffe Quarry can be seen and heard in Ridgmont Park. It is currently some 70 acres in size. Pilkington Quarry is some 63 acres in size. Pilkngton 1 has finished being worked and is now being filled in with 2 million tonnes of inert waste. Pilkington 2 is mostly unquarried so far. Montcliffe and Pilkington have been active for over a hundred years. There are no others on Winter Hill.
Montcliffe Quarry, May 2025
Adam Hill is on the skyline left of centre and to the right, White Brow. Old Ridgway Delf, now overgrown, is centre right. George's Lane runs right to left across the photo.
