STEAMING mad steeplejack and TV celebrity Fred Dibnah has pinpointed Astley as the perfect place to preserve our coal mining past.

Larger-than-life character Fred, whose world involves chimneys and relics from an age when Britannia led the world, is angry.

Angered at suggestions that The Lancashire Mining Museum might go as part of Salford Council's massive budget cutbacks.

Salford says a decision on the future of the mining museum will be made after April. But if the axe falls Fred is backing a move to Astley.

There the village pit site and industrial museum is a key ingredient in a provisional scheme to promote industrial areas on a Wigan to Trafford Park canal corridor heritage trail.

And that has got Fred - the man who has a replica pit headgear in his Bolton back garden - hopping mad.

He said: "The whole of the area, Leigh, Bolton and Wigan used to be full of mines. It is a vital part of our heritage.

"It is appalling what has happened."

Now he reckons if the museum closes it could be relocated on the Astley Green pit site which since the 1970s has been home to Red Rose steam enthusiasts.

And inter-authority co-operation could see the museum's wealth of mining memorabilia relocated beneath the Lancashire Coalfield's last standing headgear.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.