Tyldesley Coal Company was a coal mining company formed in 1870 in Tyldesley, on the Manchester Coalfield in the historic county of Lancashire, England that had its origins in Yew Tree Colliery, the location for a mining disaster that killed 25 men and boys in 1858. History 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. This became Yew Tree Colliery. By about 1851 George Green had built a tramroad to link the colliery to the Bridgewater Canal east of Astley Green. At the Tyldesley end, the tramway was worked by cable down the steep slope of the Tyldesley Banks and horse-drawn wagons completed the journey. 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. In 1860 John Holland, a railway contractor from Ireland, joined the company and the Tyldesley Coal Company was formed in 1870. The London and North Western Railway (LNWR) built a line from Eccles to Wigan via Tyldesley and the Tyldesley Loopline via Leigh to Kenyon Junction in 1864 providing the impetus for the exploitation of coal seams in Tyldesley and Greens Sidings were constructed for the company to the east of Tyldesley Station. After the arrival of the railway the company expanded rapidly. It opened Shakerley Colliery near Shakerley Little Common in 1867, which had the first iron headgear in the country but finished operating in 1878. (A different pit belonging to William Ramsden was also named Shakerley Colliery.) Combermere Colliery in Shakerley opened in 1878 and lasted until 1893. The company built a brickworks at Combermere and the railway to it operated until the mid-1930s. Cleworth Hall Colliery was sunk under the Cleworth Hall estate to the east of Yew Tree in 1874. In the early 1890s the shafts at Yew Tree were deepened. 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. The company's coal output in 1871 was 25.825 tons and its highest output was in 1907 at 419.471 tons. In 1920 it was 267.848 tons.