MUCH of Burnley's prosperity was founded on coal and cotton.

While the town might be renowned as once being the weaving capital of the world, its mines also produced a hefty tonnage of coal for more than a century.

The town and surrounding area stood atop a multitude of coal seams and numerous mines were sunk to hew it out of the ground.

Hapton Valley Colliery, for instance, began life in 1853 and at one time its output was 600 tonnes of coal a day.

It was badly flooded in 1957 and again in 1964, but it is for the disaster of 1962, when a blast claimed the lives of 19 men and boys, that it is never forgotten. Its closure was finally announced in 1981.

Clifton Colliery, in Stoneyholme, which was sunk in the 1870s, was a very wet pit more than 560,000 gallons of water were pumped out a day, or 390 gallons a minute.

During a strike in 1921, the colliery shafts were flooded to a depth of 70 feet.

Although more than 200 were employed in the early 1950s, the last tub of coal was raised to the surface at the end of 1955.

The largest cob of coal ever raised in the Burnley coalfield came from Reedley Colliery in 1891 and was four feet square.

First sunk in 1879, it had the first pithead baths in the East Lancashire area and only the second in the entire country, which were built at a cost of £2,000 in 1914 and could accommodate 180 men.

Another feature was its long underground conveyor belt, which carried coal to Bank Hall Colliery coal washing plant, weighing it at the same time.

Reedley was also one of the first to employ underground fluorescent lighting.

Deerplay Colliery could be found in the hills above Burnley and was closed in 1968.

The Lancashire Evening Telegraph photograph shows some of the 179 miners coming up from their last coal face shift that April day.