Astley Green Colliery – a geographical ambiguity. Saying it’s in Wigan will trigger the locals into fits of raging denial. While it doesn’t actually sit in the town of Wigan, it sits within the borough of Wigan, specifically Astley Green which comes under Tyldesley. The site is leased from Wigan Council, and if you’re travelling along the A580 East Lancs Road, there is a sign half a mile from the turning for Astley Green that says ‘Wigan’, but locals will still argue that it’s not in Wigan. And if you say it’s near Manchester, you will get moans as well. And let’s not forget that this is the Lancashire Mining Museum, despite now being in Greater Manchester for the past 50 years. So if you want to know where it is, its postcode is M29 7JB. It’s near Wigan and Manchester but not in either. Hope that makes things clear.

Anyway, enough of that nonsense. I’d last visited Astley Green in 2008, although I did manage to get a photo for my typology just after the first lockdown in 2020. The place was shut but I got a few through the gates, but I don’t regard that as a proper visit. So when a friend who was visiting from Scotland suggested it might be a good place to meet, I jumped at the chance for a revisit.

On my first visit to the place in 2008, I photographed the headgear through a window in the engine house which I recall as being somewhat tricky to execute for some reason – possibly because I was using a by using a 10-20 lens to get the whole window in, and super-wide angle lenses can be difficult to compose with in terms of getting things lined up etc. But I was pleased with the result and it remains a favourite photograph of mine.

More recently, I’d seen a photograph taken from the opposite side so wanted to have a go at making my own version, but this was just as hard to get the composition right for some reason – I took eight frames but am only happy with one, and have had to add a little in Photoshop to the top and left hand side to get the balance right. Not sure I prefer it to the earlier one, in fact I did try to replicate my earlier one, but it’s no longer possible to get as close to the window as it used to be.