page_title: Hulton family of Hulton
section_title: Coal
hierarchical_section_title: Hulton family of Hulton / 17th-19th century / Coal
caption_attribution_description: English: Miners at Hulton Park
context_page_description: The Hulton family of Hulton lived and owned land in Lancashire for more than eight hundred years from the late-12th to the late-20th centuries. The family took its name from the three townships surrounding their Hulton Park Estate, Over, Middle and Little Hulton.
context_section_description: The Hultons accrued much wealth from the coal under their estate. It was mined from the 1550s, but its worth became clear as industrialisation took hold in the late-18th and early-19th centuries.  William Hulton, who inherited the family estate in 1800, was responsible for the major developments that exploited the coal reserves in Hulton Park. He was a principal supporter of the Bolton and Leigh Railway, which transported the Hulton's coal to markets in Bolton, Manchester and Liverpool. The railway pioneer, George Stephenson, stayed at Hulton Hall for three months while overseeing the railway's construction. The line was opened for traffic on 1 August 1828, with 40,000 people in attendance to witness what the Bolton Chronicle described as an 'interesting and novel spectacle'. The Bolton and Leigh Railway was the first railway line to operate in Lancashire. In 1858, William Hulton founded the Hulton Colliery Company in partnership with Harwood Walcot Banner. Their partnership was dissolved ten years later and from 1868 onwards the company traded under the Hulton name. The Hultons gave up control of the coal mines in 1886 after the Hulton Colliery Company was founded. In December 1910 a defective safety lamp caused an explosion in the Pretoria Pit killing 344 men and boys. It was the worst coal mining disaster in Lancashire, and the third worst in Britain. By 1947, the Hulton coal empire could claim to be the largest in Lancashire, but it gradually diminished in the second half of the 20th century due to a nationwide fall in demand.
caption: Pit brow workers at Chequerbent Colliery
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