Matthew Fletcher

Matthew Fletcher (1731 or 1733 – 24 August 1808) was a mine owner and mining engineer in Lancashire, England.

Family Jacob Fletcher lived in Bolton and owned small coal mines in Harwood and Breightmet, Bolton. He had four sons. Matthew was the second eldest. John the eldest, sank a pit in Atherton that led in the 1870s to the formation of Fletcher, Burrows and Company. Jacob became a colliery owner at Darcy Lever and had two sons, Ellis (Matthew Fletcher's heir who died in 1834) and Adam (died 1799). Adam, was a collier at Crompton Fold and had three sons, Matthew (died 1823), Jacob (died circa 1800), and Peter who died in infancy.

Wet Earth Colliery

Matthew Fletcher came from a family of mine owners and his first notable work was on the property of another mine owner, John Heathcote. During the 1740s, Heathcote had attempted to sink Wet Earth Colliery, the first deep coal mine in the Irwell Valley at Clifton. He was a canal engineer whose feats included the Bridgewater and Trent and Mersey Canals. He suggested using a Newcomen atmospheric pumping engine but the engine had been plagued with problems. His revised scheme relied on water power but there was no flowing water on the site to power a pump and the pithead was above the level of the River Irwell. Fletcher became the chairman of the Mersey and Irwell Navigation and a committeeman of the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Company. Fletcher died on 24 August 1808 and his nephew, Ellis Fletcher inherited the Clifton Estate. On Ellis's death the estate passed to his son Jacob Fletcher Fletcher who died in 1857 and the collieries were then managed by trustees until his daughter Charlotte Anne Fletcher (who was 12 years old when her father died) was old enough to inherit the business.