The Margery Mine is one of the older mines of the area and I am not sure where its colliery buildings where sited. One drift entrance to the mine was re-used years later as an air road for the Montcliffe Mine, higher up the hill. In fact the Margery Mine is intersected by the Montcliffe No.1 shaft part-way down. I don’t know much about the quality of the coal but it would seem the Margery Mine was discontinued in favour of the deeper Sand Rock coal seam that has been extensively mined across the coalfield.
The Margery Mine coal seam is very local - as is the sandstone bed known as the Margery Flags below which the coal seam lies. In general a deep strata of alternating mudstones lies directly below a widespread sandstone known as the Wood Hill Rock, but, around the local area an imposing strata of gritstone - Ousel Nest Grit, or Horwich Grit as it is colloquially known - forms. Beneath the grit, even more locally the Margery Flags are found. What has happened here it seems, is that a mini landforming event - perhaps a small river delta - allowed plant life to develop for a relatively brief time. A mini version of the the full cycles that form the coal - sandstone beds of the Lower Coal Measures. The rocks on the sides of Brown Hill next to the pike are an outcrop of the Margery Flags, as are the rocks on top of the Pike that once had to be climbed before the steps were put in.
If you’re wondering why the Margery Mine is down the hill and the Margery Flags on the top of the pike are about 120 metres higher up, it’s because the whole of the local area is criss-crossed by geological faults - cracks in the Earth’s crust - and blocks of land between the faults have been jostled around and pushed up and down in relation to each other. Of course what we see today is the top surface of those blocks eroded down to form the current shape of the hill.
In Dave’s Winter Hill Scrapbook: “These are all part of the Holcombe Brook Coal Seam which is also known as the Margery Mine”. But, the Holcombe Brook seam is a long, long way below the Margery Mine. The Holcombe Brook Seam is near the bottom of the Millstone Grit series and the Margery Mine is near the bottom of the Pennine Lower Coal Measures series.
The site of an old coal mine or colliery on the slopes of Winter Hill above Horwich.
