Wigan Album

i remember being told in the 60's , when i was a trainee electrical engineer, that the reinforcing bars in the building were used to heat the floors

remeber at the rear of the gkn office old pit shaft collapsed it was used to tip old stuff in from ww2

I worked at G.K.N. in the 1960s and I remember we once went on strike for more money and part of the strike entailed picketing this building.
We started off very well in the morning, but come dinner time the allure of the Labour Club across the road proved to be overwhelming and we spent the afternoon picketing the billiard table instead.
We lost more money in there than we ever gained from the strike!

, payed football for gkn in the sixties got a footy team photo,
frank mcgurrin trained us he was also the union man his daughter is kay burley reads news on sky

Tom, could have been a shaft from the Douglas Bank Colliery, a fatal accident occurred there when the shaft was being sunk, info here:

https://nmrs.org.uk/mines-map/accidents-disasters/lancashire/douglas-bank-colliery-shaft-accident-wigan-1888/

https://www.wiganworld.co.uk/communicate/mb_message.php?opt=f2&msd=870958&offset=&subject=Douglas%2520Bank%2520Colliery

The actual works were some way behind this building near to the railway.
When the shaft collapsed the mobile crane was close to the enlarged shaft and a volunteer was called for to drive it away, whereupon most of us onlookers suddenly remembered that we had important work to do elsewhere! The crane was eventually moved so someone must have bit the bullet and taken one for the team.
The nearest part of the works to the shaft was the plating plant with the canteen above and the N.C.B. had to jack this whole section up in order to underpin the foundations.
After doing that they poured tons and tons of concrete down the the shaft which must have done the trick because there are now people living in the houses that have been built on top of where the shaft was.