Astley and Tyldesley Collieries

The Astley and Tyldesley Collieries Company formed in 1900 owned coal mines on the Lancashire Coalfield south of the railway in Astley and Tyldesley, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. The company became part of Manchester Collieries in 1929 and some of its collieries were nationalised in 1947.

The company's collieries were on a part of the Manchester Coalfield whose coal seams were laid down in the Carboniferous period, where some easily accessible seams were worked on a small scale before the Industrial Revolution, and extensively from the mid-19th century until the middle of the 20th century. The Coal Measures lie above a bed of Millstone Grit and are interspersed with sandstones, mudstones, shales, and fireclays. The most productive seams are in the lower two thirds of the Middle Coal Measures where coal is mined from seams between the Worsley Four Foot and Arley mines. The Coal Measures generally dip towards the south and west. Numerous small faults affect the coalfield.

In the 1840s, John Darlington leased the mineral rights of land belonging to Astley Hall and sank a pit, Astley Colliery, which subsequently became the site of Gin Pit Colliery. It was near other old shafts on Meanley's Farm. Coal had been mined in Astley before this date, on an old enclosure map North Lane was titled the "Coal Road" and later was known as "North Coal Pit Lane".

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