Disused Beehive Coke Ovens

This large battery of disused Beehive Coke Ovens is on the site of the former Broadhead Colliery in the former Turton Urban District Council area of Lancashire. It is claimed that this is the best remaining collection of beehive coke ovens in this part of the Lancashire coalfield.

Beehive Coke Ovens, so called because they were built in the shape of a natural beehive were once common in the West Pennine Moors area.
The Broadhead ovens are unusual in that they are in two facing rows rather than the more common arrangement of building the rows back-to-back which conserves more heat.

The ovens were used to produce coke which has a higher carbon content than coal and is used in blast furnaces, blacksmithing and stoves.

The ovens allowed the coal to be heated so that impurities (volatiles) were burnt off leaving the coke inside the oven. In more sophisticated ovens the volatile by-products produced in this process can be captured for subsequent use in other processes. However, at Broadhead these pollutants were allowed to escape, which caused a great deal of damage to the surrounding moorland vegetation.

Most of the pit shafts at the Broadhead Colliery went down about 100 feet to exploit the coal seam which in the Turton UDC area was known as the ‘Upper Mountain Mine’. However, a few of the shafts were over 200 feet deeper and worked the Lower Mountain Mine’.

From the historical evidence available it would appear that the Broadhead Colliery closed in the late 1840’s or early 1850’s, however it is not clear when the coke ovens were constructed or how much coke they produced.

Source: ‘Mining in Turton’ by Peter M Harris (published by Turton Local History Society) (ISBN: 978-1904974-36-9)