Upon the said wastes, lanes, ways and passages, the earth does sink and so falls upon them in great deepness and holes...and also divers of his majesty's subjects have fallen therein and been drowned, killed and maimed.   

By the mid-1840s, the output of coal in St.Helens districts was a million tons a year. Consumption of coal had greatly increased due to a rapid expansion of factories, growth of the railways and an increase in the use of steam boats. The mines were the largest employer in Sutton and by 1900, 6000 men worked in them. They were renowned as hard working but not always the most popular of folk. In 1862 the owner of a glass works remarked that:

  Colliers have a bad name; they used to live as it were isolated from everyone and were rough and ignorant  

Letterhead of the Sutton Heath & Lea Green Collieries Company

The Sutton Heath & Lea Green Collieries Company were a major player in Sutton for many years, owning a number of mines and brickworks. About 550 men worked at Lea Green pit which was situated in Lowfield Lane and was sunk in the early 1870s by James Radley.

Radley also initially owned the nearby Sutton Heath Colliery which was recorded in 1873 as having two pits and was situated at the corner of Eltonhead Road and Sutton Heath Road. Upon his death c.1887, his widow owned the colliery before apparently selling it onto the newly created Sutton Heath & Lea Green Collieries Ltd c.1890. For many years during the twentieth century, Sutton Heath served as a pumping pit and mining activities were concentrated at nearby Lea Green.

The headgears of Lea Green Colliery in Lowfield Lane

As mentioned on our industry page, William Bickford's plants in Cornwall and Sutton Junction that made safety fuses, saved many miners' lives. This 1831 invention provided greater control when detonating explosives in mines, although it took decades before safety fuses were routinely used due to penny-pinching by employers.

However, the safety fuse didn't stop miners from being blown up and there was a plethora of other ways in which mineworkers could be despatched to meet their maker. The employees at Lea Green colliery endured quite a few of them:

• January 1886 - George Parr, colliery 'hooker-on' was struck on the head by a bolt that was dropped down the shaft and died.
• January 1887 - Stoneman William Lunt was killed by stones from a blast after lighting a fuse - he was very deaf and thought the 'shot' had already gone off and so returned prematurely.
• September 1890 - A 14 year old pony driver, Thomas Hitchen, was crushed to death by tubs of coal.
• October 1893 - Pit sinker Evan Jones was killed and seven others seriously injured when a candle fell from the side of a new shaft that they were sinking, igniting an accumulation of gas.
• August 1895 - Collier Peter Malone was killed by a blast after a fireman lit a fuse where gas had accumulated.
• May 1896 - William Jones slipped backwards lifting a box onto rails and his arm became trapped - he ruptured muscles in his arm and died a week later from inflammation of the heart.
• December 1896 - Metalman Sydney Borrows was blown up when two firemen set off a charge without checking that the area was clear.
• May 1902 - Stoker James Stephens was severely scolded after steam escaped from a boiler pipe and he later died.
• June 1911 - Three labourers - John Duffy, Joseph Armstrong and Stephen Kelley - were killed at Queen pit, Lea Green when going for their dinner. They entered a wooden cabin at the pit top, which toppled over and fell fifteen feet.
• December 1912 - Contractor Thomas Regan was killed when the pit roof fell in on him.
• December 1923 - Fourteen mineworkers, mainly boys, were taken to St.Helens Hospital after their pit cage fell to the bottom of the shaft - 14 year old Benjamin Saunders fractured his thigh.
• April 1926 - John Prescott was mysteriously found dead inside Lea Green colliery.

How The Times reported the Sutton Heath & Lea Green
Colliery's appeal - click for full article

In 1897 the Workmen's Compensation Act was introduced, updating an 1880 Act which awarded up to three years wages to workers or their families injured or killed through their employer's negligence. Lord Salisbury's government passed the new Act, which granted damages upon application to a County Court without any negligence having to be proved.

However, there were so many accidents at that time that colliery owners were concerned at their financial exposure. In 1900 the Master of the Rolls - the third most senior judge in England and Wales - ruled on an appeal by the Sutton Heath and Lea Green Collieries Co. who had been ordered by St.Helens and Widnes County Court to make a compensation award under the 1897 Act to the family of a miner called Houghton who'd been killed in their mine (absent from the above list). His weekly wages, like other miners, had 6d. deducted from them for the oil required for his lamp.

Colliers inside Lea Green Colliery taken during the 1950s

Houghton earned £1 10s. 11d. per week and the County Court Judge made a compensation award on the basis that these were his weekly earnings. The Sutton Heath and Lea Green Collieries Co. argued in the Appeal Court that the award should have had the oil charge deducted. It was only a tanner, but multiplied by the number of weeks' compensation award for each affected miner, it could add up to a substantial amount. The Master of the Rolls dismissed the case as he said that the miner would probably have had to pay for clothing and tools out of his wages and it would be impossible to decide where to draw the line.

Part of the lengthy share issue advertisement published in The Times in 1920

The extra tanners in compensation awards didn't dent their profits by that much though, as Sutton Heath and Lea Green Collieries Co. made good money throughout the twentieth century. The Times in 1924 reported a £98,031 trading profit. As well as their ownership of Lea Green and Sutton Heath collieries, they also owned coal mines at Sherdley and Nutgrove as well as large brickworks at Roughdales and Sutton Heath. They also had a significant stake in Sutton Manor Colliery. In a 1920 share issue prospectus Sutton Heath and Lea Green Collieries Co. stated that their pits produced a combined 600,000 tons of coal per year and prior to the war years, their brickworks were generating 14.7m bricks per annum, with the intention of raising output to 25 million bricks p.a.

The headgears at Sherdley Colliery also owned by Sutton Heath & Lea Green Collieries Co. They stood for many years after it ceased production.

The 1926 general strike and subsequent lockout hit all miners hard as relief was only paid to dependents of married miners. So on the 17th June Sutton miners poured into St.Helens town centre to join a march of 15,000 mineworkers who processed to the offices of the Poor Law Institution at Whiston. The St.Helens Newspaper reported:

    In the streets adjacent to Bridge Street men were massed in their thousands from not only the centre of the town, but from Sutton, Parr, Clock Face, Sutton Manor and other districts...A jazz band from Sutton Manor in particular appeared to appeal.  

1926 march to Whiston demanding Poor Law Relief with Sutton Manor Miners jazz band

The soup kitchens in Sutton and Clock Face were said to be amongst the best in the borough with local shopkeepers donating food and giving credit to hard-pressed families. A Sutton miner's wife in later years remembered:

  They didn't give us any strike money unless it was the odd half-a-crown now and then. I know we got food vouchers, that is all. We were really all in the same boat then, everyone was miners round Sutton. You could all console one another. It made a mess of the shops. Mr. Bell, the grocer, hung himself. He had so much owing to him through the strike.

Men preparing food for the soup kitchen at Clock Face in Sept.1926 during the miners' lockout

This is a list of known Sutton mines. Please contact us if you can add or amend it.

• Bartons Bank Colliery Watery Lane - first mentioned 1750s, closed by 1839
• Bold Colliery Bold Lane - sunk 1876, closed 1985
• Burtonhead Colliery corner of Burtonhead Road and Sherdley Road - first mentioned 1844, closed ?
• Clock Face Colliery Gorsey Lane - first sunk 1890, closed 1966
• Eltonhead Colliery - various pits date back hundreds of year - mentioned on mineworker William Bradshaw's death certificate of 1845
• Lea Green Colliery Lowfield Lane - sunk in 1870s, closed 1964
• Peasley Cross Colliery first mentioned 1855 as Peasley House Colliery, closed ?
• Phoenix Colliery Burtonhead Road - opened 1873, mentioned in Times article (15/11/1893) as having about 200 men - closed 1895
• Ravenhead Burtonhead Road - sunk 1866, closed 1895 - reopened and mentioned in Times news article 4/6/1953
• Sherdley Colliery Broadgate Avenue - first mentioned 1873, closed ?
• Sutton Colliery Marshalls Cross Road - first mentioned 1839, closed 1903
• Sutton Heath Colliery corner Sutton Heath Road & Eltonhead Road - first mentioned 1867
• Sutton Manor Colliery Jubits Lane - sunk 1906-12, closed 1991