The Anderton Shearer Loader is a coal cutting machine which has been used in the UK coal industry since the 1950s. The Anderton Power Loader with its cutting drum up to five feet in diameter was patented in 1953. It was successfully used throughout the British coalfields and by 1966 cut half the coal produced and by 1977 it produced 80% of the coal mined in Britain.

It was invented by James Anderton OBE, born in Wigan

Wigan

Wigan is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It stands on the River Douglas, south-west of Bolton, north of Warrington and west-northwest of Manchester. Wigan is the largest settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan and is its administrative centre. The town of Wigan had a total...

, who was the general manager of a colliery in St Helens. The first Anderton shearer loader was commissioned in in 1954. It was utilised by Anderton's employers, the Groves Ravenhead Colliery in St Helens

St Helens, Merseyside

St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England. It is the largest settlement and administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens with a population of just over 100,000, part of an urban area with a total population of 176,843 at the time of the 2001 Census...

.

The machine works by "shearing" coal from a longwall

Longwall mining

Longwall mining is a form of underground coal mining where a long wall of coal is mined in a single slice . The longwall panel is typically 3–4 km long and 250–400 m wide....

coal face as it moved along the face. The shear drum is around 0.5 meters in diameter and the machine travels on an armoured conveyor with a prop-free front. The machine shears going one way and the coal at the front is deflected by a plough onto the conveyor. On the machine's return it knocks the rest of the coal onto the conveyor. The Shearer was usually used on seams thicker than a metre and produced small coal suitable for power stations.