Stables similar to this would have been found at Ness Colliery used for what were variously described as horses or ponies. The animals lived permanently underground.

The photograph, taken c.1860 by John Pattison Gibson, shows Errington with his three daughters. He was 11th Baronet in the line of the Stanleys of Hooton (he had changed his name from Rowland Massey Stanley) and owned the colliery for its final year or so.

Image from the National Portrait Gallery.

John was brother of Thomas Cottingham who ran Little Neston Colliery from c.1820 to c.1845. He was an excitable and heavily-indebted lawyer who hoped to be granted the lease to operate the colliery in 1824. He became very bitter when he was excluded from these arrangements.

Source: Illustrated London News, 4 August 1849.