simonrail
  • simonrail
  • 50.2% (Neutral)
  • Newbie Topic Starter
10 years ago
Many a time have I driven up and down the A1 and failed to notice the site of this colliery just to the west of Bramham.
This could be because the grid ref. given is wrong - if changed to SE 422205 that places the colliery site to the SW of Featherstone which seems a bit more likely.:smartass:
Yes, I'll have it - what is it?
RJV
  • RJV
  • 50.2% (Neutral)
  • Newbie
10 years ago
In all fairness, Bramham is probably a nicer place to be but I've relocated it anyway!
Aditaddict
10 years ago
It is indeed just outside featherstone , it now has a big new police station on it and an industrial estate
Grumpytramp
10 years ago
"RJV" wrote:

In all fairness, Bramham is probably a nicer place to be but I've relocated it anyway!



Interestingly Bramham has a long connection with the West Yorkshire coal industry or more specifically Bowcliffe Hall which sits above the A1(M) here:

http://binged.it/1DVsRbD 

While it had been originally constructed and owned by a variety of people, until the early 20th Century when it came it to the ownership of Walter Geoffrey Jackson, the Managing Director of Henry Briggs Son and Company (an important West Yorkshire colliery owner). In 1917, the house was then bought Robert Blackburn, the chairman of Blackburn Aircraft who lived there until 1950.

There after it owned by the Hargreaves Fuel Company which used it as the official office of a number of licenced mines and opencast sites and of course to manage their solid fuel distribution network. It then became the HQ of Bayford Group. Bayford & Co was formed by four ex-WW1 soldiers who had formed a coal merchants business in Leeds immediately after the war. By the 1950's they diversified into the sale and distribution of oil (including the old brand of petrol, Thrust) and handled large quantities of coal particularly in the Aire Valley. In the 1980s they operated a number of licenced opencast coal sites in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Scotland at the time the coal industry was being deregulated.

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