Fairbottom Colliery atmospheric pumping engine c1880
A colliery called Fairbottom worked in the late seventeenth century. It was a colliery in the old sense, where a number of shafts were sunk over a significant area. Some of those pits, e.g. Copperas House (or Woodpark from 1866), later became collieries in their own right, but between 1854 and 1865, under Leeses & Booth, it was listed as Fairbottom Colliery.
At some time in the eighteenth century, an atmospheric pumping engine, of the Newcomen type, was put on a shaft at Fairbottom Bobs near the River Medlock. Although it stopped work in the late 1820s it survived, though in a dilapidated condition, until the 1920s. It was then purchased from Lord Stamford and shipped to the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan, where it is on display.
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