Bursnip Road crossing cottage and signal box

Image: © John Winder Taken: Unknown

The line which served the collieries at Holly Bank and Hilton Main, on the northern edge of the Black Country, crossed Bursnip Road on the level at this point. The former wages office of Holly Bank colliery was adapted and became the crossing keeper's cottage and signal box. The building remains in use as a private house to this day: when this was taken, its renovation from a state of near - dereliction was just being completed. Holly Bank Colliery stopped producing coal in 1927, but was retained until the late 1960s as a part of the drainage and ventilation systems at Hilton Main Colliery, to which it was linked by the old mine workings. The railway was dismantled by about 1970. When I visited in 1993 there were still some lengths of rail to be found rusting away in the undergrowth across the road.

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