Ash falling through the fire grate onto the bottom of the fire-tube  was regularly raked out by hand and sent for disposal.

After the cessation of coal production from the North pit, the ROM coal bunker near the Power House was adapted for ash storage. A short inclined conveyor was installed at the SE end of the boiler-house which carried ash to the gantry conveyor feeding the ROM coal bunker. From the bunker it was removed either by railway wagon or by lorry.  Its subsequent disposal is unclear.

Before 1960 it’s not entirely clear how the ash was removed. At some stage a short incline tunnel to the North pit-top was constructed at the NE end of the boiler-house and it may be that ash from the East side boilers was loaded into tubs and hauled up through it onto the pit-top  From there it would have either been dumped on the waste tip or sent to an ash tip ready for collection. This incline appears on the 1938 1 : 2500 OS map, but not on the 1916 one, so it was probably installed as part of the 1920’s South pit upgrade.  The tracks at the top of the incline are still in-situ, but the tunneled section has been excavated away.

Early than that, it is not known how ash was removed from either the East or the West side boilers. Although flue-ash and clinker was a  useful commodity in the 19th century most of it would have been sent to the tips. The 1899 and 1916 maps show two small tips on the NW side of the heapsteads which are fed by tub-tracks emerging from tunnels at a similar elevation to the boiler-house floor but these are no longer present on the 1938 map. It may be that these tunnels were linked underground to the boiler-house and the ash removed through them.

Detail from 1916 1 : 2540 map showing the NW tips

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05 May, 2009