Balloon accident at Stone Breaks Hill, Oldham.

It must be remembered that the Yorkshire boundary was very different some 170 years ago and this incident occurred on the Yorkshire side of what was then the Lancashire / Yorkshire border. Numerous modern accounts that detail this incident all state it was in Lancashire. It very much was not.

On 2nd June 1852 this gas filled balloon took off from Belle Vue Gardens in Manchester into what was somewhat poor weather conditions but in front of a large crowd. The balloon was around forty feet high and thirty feet wide and was his fifty first balloon flight. After taking off it rose into a black cloud and was lost to the sight of those on the ground in Manchester. From Manchester the balloon headed roughly north-east with the flight lasting around twenty five minutes and travelled around eight miles, latterly in heavy rain with a gusty wind. The method of stopping balloons was to throw out a form of grappling hook and hope it either dug into the ground or caught on something solid. The hooks were thrown out as it approached the rising ground of Stone Breaks Hill but when they struck the ground they had little effect. Unfortunately, at around 19.45hrs, in the path of the basket lay a number of stone field boundary walls through which the basket passed. The balloon pilot was unfortunately thrown or fell from the basket but remained tangled in ropes so that he was head down below the basket. He was struck on the head during another collision with a wall and given the injuries described in the newspapers of the day, would have pretty much died instantly. The balloon basket with him suspended below it continued to the summit of Stone Breaks Hill where there was a disused quarry with a house next to it, that halted both the balloon pilot and the balloon long enough for people on the ground to grab it and slash the balloon to release the gas. The pilot was cut free from the ropes but nothing could be done for him. The route the balloon took possibly saw it pass over or go very close to what was later and still is now a cricket field.

Pilot / Aeronaut - Mr James Goulston (alias "Guiseppe Lunardini"), aged 54, of Old Kent Road, London. Burial location unknown, London.