(grid reference SJ70509996) Before becoming a museum, the site was a working colliery that produced coal from 1912 to 1970; it is now protected as a Scheduled Monument.

[1] The museum occupies a 15-acre (6 ha) site by the Bridgewater Canal which has the only surviving pit headgear and engine house on the Lancashire Coalfield.

The headgear is made from wrought iron lattice girders with rivetted plates at the joints.

[3] In the winding house there is a twin tandem compound steam engine made by Yates and Thom of Blackburn who supplied 16 Lancashire boilers.

The 3,300 horse power twin tandem compound engine was built by Yates & Thom in Blackburn.