ASTLEY's distinctive lattice pit headgear used to be just one of many dotted around JOURNAL-land.

Now it is unique in the gritty bit of the north west known as the Lancashire Coalfield - the last striking reminder of why a good percentage of people reading this are actually living in the north west.

Headgear, winding house and a few odd buildings at Astley Green apart, all that remains of the industry are a few slag heaps, capped shafts and a redundant workforce.

Oh, there's the odd building, pit houses and even, up at Gin Pit, a village and a club or two, the odd memorial stone and a (now for sale) mines rescue complex.

Then there is the Lancashire Mining Museum at Buile Hill Park on Eccles Old Road at Salford.

The inventory at the museum - originally built in 1825 and the home of Sir Thomas Potter, Manchester's first Mayor - is impressive.

Apart from recreated underground workings and even a stuffed pit pony, there are some 12,000 volumes relating to mining.

There are also 3,000 objects, 5,000 photographs and 200 works of art.

Then there are 1,000 mining maps depicting shafts, colliery layouts and underground workings plus 600 feet of shelved boxed archives. When Parkside Colliery went in 1996 it marked the end of 700 years of intensive mining in the region.

In 1296 it was first recorded how the monks of Bolton Abbey were using coal mined on the outskirts of Burnley.

But coal mining could date back much further.

At Arley, in the Red Rock district of Wigan, workings were uncovered which could be Roman.

These are octagonal chambers linked underground which are similar to Roman metal mines in Spain.

The boom came in the 1850s, but with it came bigger pits, bigger accidents and regular explosions.

All this industrial activity attracted the top mining brains in the country.

Coalopolis - as the Wigan area came to be known - became the base for expert engineers, surveyors and lawyers, who dealt with compensation, subsidence and royalty disputes.

Now, even though the Lancashire Mining Museum is threatened with closure, there is a chance to secure the area's rich mining heritage for future generations.

Mining museum curator Alan Davies, brought-up in Atherton and now living in Tyldesley, says "It is vital these collections stay in the north west - it is a regional museum."

Alan's grandfather moved from Shropshire to Westhoughton in the 19th century helping on rescue operations after the terrible Pretoria Pit explosion of 1910 (344 killed).

This affected him so much he went to work in the mines in the USA. But Alan had always been interested in mining.

Alan began at Old Boston training centre, Haydock, got a job at Parkside, then moved to the Midlands to work at Keresley Colliery, Coventry.Later he worked at Bickershaw and had a near miss while working at the privately owned Castle Colliery near Billinge.

Alan recalls: "Castle Colliery was an eye opener. To be on a face where the water is coming in from the roof while you are trying to saw wooden props to support it is unbelievable.

"You are totally reliant on skill. A massive stone just missed me by inches.

"But that experience stood me in good stead.

"I wished I'd been in mining 40 years before. There were so many different outlets within the National Coal Board. So many career possibilities."

In the Tyldesley area - which at its peak had two thirds of its male workforce down the mines - the last two collieries were Mosley Common (closed 1968) and Astley Green (1970).

Alan said: "Astley was a very productive, efficient colliery. It had huge potential, they expected to get vast amounts of coal from under Chat Moss.

"Things didn't go as predicted but they still got a record 800,000 tons a year - a massive amount.

"Mosley Common in its time had over 3,000 men. When it closed it left reserves of well over 100,000,000 tons.

"But Mrs Thatcher wiped out the industry. In Germany they kept the mining communities alive by subsidies."

There's still a pit lamp glimmering faintly though. At Guide Bridge, Bacup there's a private mine that is temporarily closed.

But on hearing of the plight of the Lancashire Mining Museum, earmarked for the axe because of drastic budgeting, the Bacup men inquired about the possibility of buying a 1950s cutter on exhibition at Buile Hill.

"I had to tell them this is a museum, we're not in to selling things," smiled Alan.