Swan Bank Colliery

1. Bank Bottom Dayhole	2. Pit Hill and Swan Bank shaft	3. Marsh Lane shaft
4. Marsh Farm	5. Site of the Swan Bank Brick and Coal Company brickworks

Located almost in the centre of Halifax this is really two mines. A dayhole entrance Bank Bottom which was located about 100 yards up Southowram Bank and very well situated to supply both the town and gas works which preferred the local Soft Bed coal to that brought in by canal .When the mines in the area were visited in 1842 Bank Bottom was one of only two mines out of the 200 visited that had roadways high enough to admit a horse. The galloway gate as it was known runs up through Beacon Hill to Swan Bank and when the railway tunnel was constructed in 1850 an "iron tunnel" was made to carry the mine road over it.

Bank Bottom Colliery (Rawson map of Halifax c.1842)

At Swan Bank the mine was equipped with a steam engine which hauled the coals up from the Soft Bed 25yds to the Hard Bed which in turn was 25 yds from the surface. It was then drawn out to Bank Bottom a distance of 800yds by boys driving galloway ponies. The roadways in the Soft Bed seam were described as1 yard 4 inches high reducing in many places to 1 yard. A further shaft was located on Marsh Lane.

Swan Bank Colliery (Rawson map of Halifax c.1842)

The first coal was mined here around 1790 by John Mitchell. From the 1820s the mine was owned by the Rawson family well known as Halifax bankers. In 1864 the Swan Bank Brick and Coal Company was formed and the Rawsons involvement with the mine appears to have ended by 1870. In 1873 the mine made an agreement to take 24 acres of both hard bed and soft bed coal under Marsh Farm but by 1875 the mine had closed. The Swan Bank Brick and Coal Company continued to make bricks at Bailey Hall Road, where they quarried shale. The brick works is now buried under the Nestles chocolate factory and the quarry is the site of a car-park where the Halifax Hard Bed coal still outcrops from the hillside.

Pit Hill on Trooper Lane some of the origonal mine buildings and the only lasting reminder of eighty years of industry and toil beneath Beacon Hill.