Swanwick Common Colliery Headstock and Winding House

The steel headstock and brick winding house of a small, early-C20 colliery.

PLAN: both winding house and headstock are rectangular and orientated roughly north / south, with the winding house around 10m north of the headstock.

MATERIALS: the winding house is brick with slate roof tiles, the headstock is constructed from steel ‘I’ profile beams.

WINDING HOUSE

EXTERIOR: the winding house has a pitched, slate covered roof with gable ends to north and south. Walls are red brick in English bond to lower courses and in the gables, the rest is in English garden wall or irregular bond.

The south elevation faces the headstock, and has a single steel door and steel lintel inserted into a formerly wider and higher opening with a stone lintel, now partially brick infilled. Floor level is about 1m above ground level, and there is a largely ruinous brick block of steps up to the door. Located centrally above the older, higher lintel is an infilled rectangular opening with brick lintel, likely the route through which cables to the headstock passed from the winding machine.

The side elevations are plain brick decorated with a recessed panel around a third of the way up the height of the walls. The bottoms of the panels are marked out in blue plinth bricks. As for the south elevation, there is a steel door about 1m above ground level, though here the lintel is concrete and the steps up are gone.

INTERIOR: one room open to the rafters. The walls and floor are exposed brick, with a thin screed of concrete over part of the floor. The floor has a lip down from its south end. Electrical switchgear is mounted to the east wall, and there is a blocked opening under a stone lintel in the west wall.

HEADSTOCK

EXTERIOR: this is a simple structure comprised of two rectangular frames made from ‘I’ profile steel beams bolted together and braced with diagonal steel struts. The frames carry two pairs of parallel rails (again formed from steel beams), each which carries a steel wheel. The frames are buttressed by further steel beams to the north.