Yew Tree Farm covered about 18 Cheshire acres on the north side of Sale Lane to the east of Tyldesley.
In 1845 George Green of Wharton Hall, Little Hulton, and his brother William, leased it and sank a shaft to prospect for coal.
[3] The tramway was out of use by 1913 when the tipping plant and sidings by the canal were sold to the Clifton and Kersley Coal Company to be used by its colliery at Astley Green.
Cleworth Hall colliery was modernised before the 1914 and the Arley pit shaft equipped with steel headgear and a washery and coal preparation plant built.
A fault caused the company to sink another shaft, the Daisy Pit, to win coal from seams close to the surface.
The company remained independent until it became part of the National Coal Board's (NCB) North Western Division on nationalisation in January 1947 when 760 men were employed underground and 258 on the surface.
[13][14] The locomotives owned by the Tyldesley Coal Company had to pass under the Manchester Road bridge which had restricted headroom and were built to a reduced loading gauge.
Beatrice, another 4-coupled saddle tank, was bought from Vulcan Foundry in Newton le Willows in 1877, the same year that Jessie was delivered from Walker Brothers in Wigan.