Hulme's Pit

Hulme's Pit alongside the river Tame in Denton. It is reputed to have opened in c.1730 but it is known that it was operated by the Fletcher family (Denton Colliery Company) who eventually used it as a pumping station to drain water from their mine workings. A beam engine was installed here before 1834, prior to the pit being taken over by Denton Colliery It was used for both winding (men and coal) and pumping. It raised water from a depth of 420 feet at a boiler pressure of five pounds per square inch. Steam was supplied by two Cornish boilers. In the early 1920s it was recorded that it removed eight gallons of water per stroke at six strokes per minute. It worked 4½ hours a day, 7 days a week and it consumed three tons of coal per week. This means that it raised 4,730,400 gallons of water from the workings of Denton Colliery every year for a coal consumption of 156 tons. The pit closed in 1929/30, at the same time as Denton Colliery, and the beam engine was scrapped in the early 1930s. All the buildings associated with the pit were subsequently demolished but the surviving stone foundations of the pit were excavated in the 1970s.