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We were up early for our trip to the National Coal Mining Museum with Graeme. We were really looking forward to it, particularly since Dean had told us that his grandfather had worked in the pit and that he and his father would never consider working underground, and Graeme’s father had worked in the pits too. Graeme remembered being a boy at secondary school, which was near the pit head, and rushing to the fence when an ambulance went by to the mine, with the boys whose fathers worked underground each wondering if it was his father they were going for.
This was an outstanding museum, with a fascinating hour long underground tour, and exhibitions of mine machinery in the grounds, all for free. We started in the museum, where aspects of coal mining and life for the workers are each teased out through interesting items, written information and audio visual displays.
Coal was the fuel which enabled Britain to make the most of the Industrial Revolution with the growth of industries in the 18th and 19th centuries. 1.25 million people worked in coal mining at the beginning of the twentieth century. Miners’ welfare was important but not considered to be a major responsibility of the company in the early days. Other groups, such as the church, organised outings and welfare for miners and eventually, with the rise of the Unions, workers looked to those organisations to support them in winning improvements in working conditions and with financial assistance in times of illness and death. A coal tax was supposed to bring reforms to housing, and baths at the pit heads, but the work was very hard and living conditions were often sub-standard for the workers.
It was not all grim, for pits produced their own sporting teams and these provided some recreation, but the picture was pretty much one of working underground, union and political involvement and work, sports related to the pit, another shift underground, and so on. In the 1920s a Miners Welfare Fund was set up to assist miners in times of trouble, but prior to that ‘Friendly Societies’ had formed, with weekly contributions from wages providing a form of insurance. The Miners Welfare Fund took this a step further, using the coal tax to establish libraries, baths, canteens, sports grounds, parks, scholarships for miners’ children and assisting with education for miners. In 1947 the mines were nationalised and the National Coal Board took over responsibility for welfare in mining communities.
It was time for our tour. Handing in all our ‘contraband’ – items that you can’t take in a mine (which is anything with a battery in it except for hearing aids and pace makers), we were fitted with our pit helmets and torch belts. Our group was squeezed and locked into the cage and descended at a sedate pace compared with the real workers, going down the 1200 feet at about 15 feet per second. We had a wonderful guide; a man who had worked as a miner and who knew exactly how to work the crowd of mixed ages and children so that everyone could hear and understand. Near the cage bottom we saw the ventilation shaft running uphill. It also served as the second exit, an innovation that was introduced fairly late in the history of mining and which seems blatantly obvious as a requirement for safety.
Over the next hour we were to come to understand how all reforms had to be recognised as needs, how the right to reforms had to be fought for, and then it was often a case of invention being required to make the reforms happen. We saw changes in working conditions, machinery, methods of making the tunnels safe for workers, air testing, ways to dig out the coal and transport it to the shaft and in pumping out water.
In the earliest days of coal mining, it was a family affair with a family being paid by the weight of coal it collectively produced. We crawled into a low tunnel where a father would have used the only candle to assist him as he lay on his side picking at an 18 inch seam while his wife would crouch beside him, shovelling the coal into an open box strapped to her waist. Meanwhile their six year old, or younger child who could not contribute much as a worker, waited in the pitch dark outside the door to the tunnel with the rats and mice crawling and squeaking around him. When the box was full, the mother would knock on the door and the child would open it, so that the brief opening of the tunnel to let her out would let air in but would not interfere with the flow of air around the mine in general. Black rock found in with the coal would mean that the whole load would be discounted, with everyone who contributed to that load being penalised and the owner having the benefit of their labour for nothing.
Later women and children were banned from the mines, but childhood stopped at about twelve and manhood and mining could start then. The jobs were gradually changed to suit a young worker’s size and physical ability with, of course, very low wages at first. Two of the children on our tour delighted in rubbing coal dust onto their faces so that we could see how a miner would look after a day down below. The mine employed a system of metal tokens and a jobs board, with miners always taking their tokens below with them and replacing them when they returned, so that, in an emergency, it could easily be seen who was at risk. A jobs board also recorded where each worker was and what task he was doing on a particular shift. Some generalist miners without specific jobs reported to an office down below and were allocated tasks of people who were sick, or extra jobs that needed doing. All the machinery was of giant size and had to be brought down component by component and reassembled by fitters at the site where it would work. Originally relying on man power assisted by pit ponies for hauling, the mines gradually became more and more mechanised and were noisy and smelly places. In once section, a conveyor belt fed coal into a chute and then it was relayed along another belt to the shaft. The noise was monotonous and deafening, lulling the watchman to sleep, so that he missed seeing and smashing up the overlarge lumps that would block the chute. On occasions it was known for a watchman to wake and find himself up to his knees in a sea of coal to shovel back onto the belts. No doubt this was before issues of industrial deafness had surfaced – another need for reformers to address. Our guide told us that the owners were generally not fussed when they lost men in accidents because they cost nothing and were easily replaced, but they showed genuine concern if anything happened to a pit pony, since it had to be paid for. Sometimes the conditions for the ponies were better than those for the men. Water was brought down by each man in a metal container, as was the ‘snatch’ or lunch sandwich, to protect them from rats and mice. Miners often worked a long distance from the shaft and might have to walk a mile or so underground. Some risked frightful injuries by riding on the conveyor belts, where a miscalculation of timing or of foothold could cripple you for life. First aiders were well trained, after the reform that recognised that they were needed, because a medium injury could be fatal by the time a miner was brought to the surface. Mine disasters were common, with collapses, injuries from machines, flooding, accidents with explosives and other accidents killing many hundreds men each year. Apart from that, many people died or were debilitated from mine related diseases such as emphysema. All these statistics are borne out in the local cemeteries that we were to visit, where there are graves mentioning major disasters and accidents and many other deaths of young men, some of which must surely have been due to the harsh and dangerous conditions in the mines. Our guide had lain on his side hour after hour picking at a low seam as a young man, so we are not talking about the dark ages, although perhaps in some ways we are.
Above ground again, we read about the importance of the Unions and saw the amazing banners that each Union had made to represent its role with its members. Banners were used in celebratory marches and at recreational activities, in protests and political demonstrations and at funerals after a mine accident. The unions were powerful as a united organisation, but day to day operations and welfare were the province of the small component groups. The banners were magnificent and were originally made by hand. Later a factory specialising in banners was established, with sign writers and specialist painters writing inspiring slogans and painting scenes or symbols that represented union activities on glorious fabrics woven and sewn together by their workers. It could take nine months to make an individualised banner, which would be two sided. It was cheaper to select a design from the catalogue.
The history of mining involved technological and welfare improvements, but it continued to be a dangerous job with long term health hazards. It was not until the 1960s that the annual death toll from mine accidents in England fell below 1000. Miners have been involved in political action, with extensive strikes crippling communities and establishing animosities between strikers and scabs, and the police. In 1984 the Thatcher government closed down the pits amidst a sea of protests and considerable hardship for miners and their families. When the mines closed the machinery and the infrastructure were left below, and much is buried. A period of natural subsidence meant constant monitoring and work at sites was necessary. Some pits have reopened recently, with coal now being seen as one important supplier of energy into the future.
A ride on the coal trucks took us to the end of the museum site where we could look at other aspects of mining at that pit, such as the machines for pumping out the water that continually seeped into the mines, the air compressors which ran machinery below ground and the works where blacksmiths and fitters and turners worked to supply tools and to make and maintain machines. It was not surprising that the café had finished with lunches when we stopped at three o’clock, but luckily just one of their huge fruit scones or cakes and a cup of tea or coffee was enough to fuel us up for the next part of our day out.
This was definitely an above ground experience: the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton in Wakelfield. The sculptures are set in paddocks, parklands, around the lake and throughout formal gardens on the 500 acre Bretton Estate.
We started with a ramble through the Henry Moore sculptures, which looked fabulous in this setting. Moore’s father was a miner and he spent time sketching miners at work down pits but none of his works on display here showed obvious links to that aspect of his background. They did show his focus on shape and form; aspects which he sees everywhere in the landscape. He draws inspiration from landscapes and cloud formations and sees the outdoors as ideal for displaying his works.
The house is not open to the public, but forms a grand focus for the gardens and the sculptures. We rambled about, looking at each sculpture and enjoying the grounds. Some sculptures were immediately appealing; others needed some discussion and thought about the concepts and methods involved, and others remained enigmas to us. We were continually led on around the park by the next art work. One was a sound installation in an old pergola where the sound was stimulated by viewers moving across the floor or sitting on the benches. An ancient yew tree in the garden behind was a living sculpture itself.
It would be easy to spend a whole day at the sculpture park, with the terrace walls containing galleries for indoor works, the terraces themselves being used as display areas, and other exhibitions beyond the gardens in the farm area. We had a most enjoyable time while we were there and the rain, which had dogged the day, kindly refrained from falling on us. Graeme is very good company and we were very appreciative of him taking us out for the day.
Graeme came in with us to meet Michael, who we were dining with. Michael’s friends who he met in Tanzania, Mzee and Dianne, were also there, with Mzee busily cooking up a pilaf with coconut rice and a bean in coconut milk dish. Diane has taught in Tanzanian schools, trained teachers and travelled around quite a bit, so she was the perfect person to discuss possibilities for helping in the school when we go to Ticha’s village of Farkwa. Michelle and Andy were there and they are also great proponents of travel and adventures.
The meal was delicious, and at the end of the evening Mzee kindly offered to take us around if we went to Pemba Island, off Tanzania, which is his homeland and where he will be at the time of our trip. Fully enthused and now feeling that we needed more time rather than less to visit Tanzania, we wrote to our travel agent asking for tickets allowing about five weeks there.
Dean, Maureen, Steff and Jimmy were playing a card game called ‘Wagga’ when we got home and Keith had a hand. It is based on ridding yourself of your cards, but to do that you have to have groups of the same numbers or runs, and you can’t start to put out cards until you can put out enough to add up to 51 points or more. You can add on to other players’ groups, so holding on to your cards is a risk but a defence against other people ridding themselves of their cards by building on yours.
A miner's daily requirements: a Dudley for water and a steel sandwich box to keep rats and mice out.
We were up early for our trip to the National Coal Mining Museum with Graeme. We were really looking forward to it, particularly since Dean had told us that his grandfather had worked in the pit and that he and his father would never consider working underground, and Graeme’s father had worked in the pits too. Graeme remembered being a boy at secondary school, which was near the pit head, and rushing to the fence when an ambulance went by to the mine, with the boys whose fathers worked underground each wondering if it was his father they were going for.
This was an outstanding museum, with a fascinating hour long underground tour, and exhibitions of mine machinery in the grounds, all for free. We started in the museum, where aspects of coal mining and life for the workers are each teased out through interesting items, written information and audio visual displays.
Coal was the fuel which enabled Britain to make the most of the Industrial Revolution with the growth of industries in the 18th and 19th centuries. 1.25 million people worked in coal mining at the beginning of the twentieth century. Miners’ welfare was important but not considered to be a major responsibility of the company in the early days. Other groups, such as the church, organised outings and welfare for miners and eventually, with the rise of the Unions, workers looked to those organisations to support them in winning improvements in working conditions and with financial assistance in times of illness and death. A coal tax was supposed to bring reforms to housing, and baths at the pit heads, but the work was very hard and living conditions were often sub-standard for the workers.It was not all grim, for pits produced their own sporting teams and these provided some recreation, but the picture was pretty much one of working underground, union and political involvement and work, sports related to the pit, another shift underground, and so on. In the 1920s a Miners Welfare Fund was set up to assist miners in times of trouble, but prior to that ‘Friendly Societies’ had formed, with weekly contributions from wages providing a form of insurance. The Miners Welfare Fund took this a step further, using the coal tax to establish libraries, baths, canteens, sports grounds, parks, scholarships for miners’ children and assisting with education for miners. In 1947 the mines were nationalised and the National Coal Board took over responsibility for welfare in mining communities.
It was time for our tour. Handing in all our ‘contraband’ – items that you can’t take in a mine (which is anything with a battery in it except for hearing aids and pace makers), we were fitted with our pit helmets and torch belts. Our group was squeezed and locked into the cage and descended at a sedate pace compared with the real workers, going down the 1200 feet at about 15 feet per second. We had a wonderful guide; a man who had worked as a miner and who knew exactly how to work the crowd of mixed ages and children so that everyone could hear and understand. Near the cage bottom we saw the ventilation shaft running uphill. It also served as the second exit, an innovation that was introduced fairly late in the history of mining and which seems blatantly obvious as a requirement for safety.
Over the next hour we were to come to understand how all reforms had to be recognised as needs, how the right to reforms had to be fought for, and then it was often a case of invention being required to make the reforms happen. We saw changes in working conditions, machinery, methods of making the tunnels safe for workers, air testing, ways to dig out the coal and transport it to the shaft and in pumping out water.
In the earliest days of coal mining, it was a family affair with a family being paid by the weight of coal it collectively produced. We crawled into a low tunnel where a father would have used the only candle to assist him as he lay on his side picking at an 18 inch seam while his wife would crouch beside him, shovelling the coal into an open box strapped to her waist. Meanwhile their six year old, or younger child who could not contribute much as a worker, waited in the pitch dark outside the door to the tunnel with the rats and mice crawling and squeaking around him. When the box was full, the mother would knock on the door and the child would open it, so that the brief opening of the tunnel to let her out would let air in but would not interfere with the flow of air around the mine in general. Black rock found in with the coal would mean that the whole load would be discounted, with everyone who contributed to that load being penalised and the owner having the benefit of their labour for nothing.
Later women and children were banned from the mines, but childhood stopped at about twelve and manhood and mining could start then. The jobs were gradually changed to suit a young worker’s size and physical ability with, of course, very low wages at first. Two of the children on our tour delighted in rubbing coal dust onto their faces so that we could see how a miner would look after a day down below. The mine employed a system of metal tokens and a jobs board, with miners always taking their tokens below with them and replacing them when they returned, so that, in an emergency, it could easily be seen who was at risk. A jobs board also recorded where each worker was and what task he was doing on a particular shift. Some generalist miners without specific jobs reported to an office down below and were allocated tasks of people who were sick, or extra jobs that needed doing. All the machinery was of giant size and had to be brought down component by component and reassembled by fitters at the site where it would work. Originally relying on man power assisted by pit ponies for hauling, the mines gradually became more and more mechanised and were noisy and smelly places. In once section, a conveyor belt fed coal into a chute and then it was relayed along another belt to the shaft. The noise was monotonous and deafening, lulling the watchman to sleep, so that he missed seeing and smashing up the overlarge lumps that would block the chute. On occasions it was known for a watchman to wake and find himself up to his knees in a sea of coal to shovel back onto the belts. No doubt this was before issues of industrial deafness had surfaced – another need for reformers to address. Our guide told us that the owners were generally not fussed when they lost men in accidents because they cost nothing and were easily replaced, but they showed genuine concern if anything happened to a pit pony, since it had to be paid for. Sometimes the conditions for the ponies were better than those for the men. Water was brought down by each man in a metal container, as was the ‘snatch’ or lunch sandwich, to protect them from rats and mice. Miners often worked a long distance from the shaft and might have to walk a mile or so underground. Some risked frightful injuries by riding on the conveyor belts, where a miscalculation of timing or of foothold could cripple you for life. First aiders were well trained, after the reform that recognised that they were needed, because a medium injury could be fatal by the time a miner was brought to the surface. Mine disasters were common, with collapses, injuries from machines, flooding, accidents with explosives and other accidents killing many hundreds men each year. Apart from that, many people died or were debilitated from mine related diseases such as emphysema. All these statistics are borne out in the local cemeteries that we were to visit, where there are graves mentioning major disasters and accidents and many other deaths of young men, some of which must surely have been due to the harsh and dangerous conditions in the mines. Our guide had lain on his side hour after hour picking at a low seam as a young man, so we are not talking about the dark ages, although perhaps in some ways we are.
Above ground again, we read about the importance of the Unions and saw the amazing banners that each Union had made to represent its role with its members. Banners were used in celebratory marches and at recreational activities, in protests and political demonstrations and at funerals after a mine accident. The unions were powerful as a united organisation, but day to day operations and welfare were the province of the small component groups. The banners were magnificent and were originally made by hand. Later a factory specialising in banners was established, with sign writers and specialist painters writing inspiring slogans and painting scenes or symbols that represented union activities on glorious fabrics woven and sewn together by their workers. It could take nine months to make an individualised banner, which would be two sided. It was cheaper to select a design from the catalogue.
The history of mining involved technological and welfare improvements, but it continued to be a dangerous job with long term health hazards. It was not until the 1960s that the annual death toll from mine accidents in England fell below 1000. Miners have been involved in political action, with extensive strikes crippling communities and establishing animosities between strikers and scabs, and the police. In 1984 the Thatcher government closed down the pits amidst a sea of protests and considerable hardship for miners and their families. When the mines closed the machinery and the infrastructure were left below, and much is buried. A period of natural subsidence meant constant monitoring and work at sites was necessary. Some pits have reopened recently, with coal now being seen as one important supplier of energy into the future.A ride on the coal trucks took us to the end of the museum site where we could look at other aspects of mining at that pit, such as the machines for pumping out the water that continually seeped into the mines, the air compressors which ran machinery below ground and the works where blacksmiths and fitters and turners worked to supply tools and to make and maintain machines. It was not surprising that the café had finished with lunches when we stopped at three o’clock, but luckily just one of their huge fruit scones or cakes and a cup of tea or coffee was enough to fuel us up for the next part of our day out.This was definitely an above ground experience: the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton in Wakelfield. The sculptures are set in paddocks, parklands, around the lake and throughout formal gardens on the 500 acre Bretton Estate.
We started with a ramble through the Henry Moore sculptures, which looked fabulous in this setting. Moore’s father was a miner and he spent time sketching miners at work down pits but none of his works on display here showed obvious links to that aspect of his background. They did show his focus on shape and form; aspects which he sees everywhere in the landscape. He draws inspiration from landscapes and cloud formations and sees the outdoors as ideal for displaying his works.The house is not open to the public, but forms a grand focus for the gardens and the sculptures. We rambled about, looking at each sculpture and enjoying the grounds. Some sculptures were immediately appealing; others needed some discussion and thought about the concepts and methods involved, and others remained enigmas to us. We were continually led on around the park by the next art work. One was a sound installation in an old pergola where the sound was stimulated by viewers moving across the floor or sitting on the benches. An ancient yew tree in the garden behind was a living sculpture itself.It would be easy to spend a whole day at the sculpture park, with the terrace walls containing galleries for indoor works, the terraces themselves being used as display areas, and other exhibitions beyond the gardens in the farm area. We had a most enjoyable time while we were there and the rain, which had dogged the day, kindly refrained from falling on us. Graeme is very good company and we were very appreciative of him taking us out for the day.Graeme came in with us to meet Michael, who we were dining with. Michael’s friends who he met in Tanzania, Mzee and Dianne, were also there, with Mzee busily cooking up a pilaf with coconut rice and a bean in coconut milk dish. Diane has taught in Tanzanian schools, trained teachers and travelled around quite a bit, so she was the perfect person to discuss possibilities for helping in the school when we go to Ticha’s village of Farkwa. Michelle and Andy were there and they are also great proponents of travel and adventures.The meal was delicious, and at the end of the evening Mzee kindly offered to take us around if we went to Pemba Island, off Tanzania, which is his homeland and where he will be at the time of our trip. Fully enthused and now feeling that we needed more time rather than less to visit Tanzania, we wrote to our travel agent asking for tickets allowing about five weeks there.
Dean, Maureen, Steff and Jimmy were playing a card game called ‘Wagga’ when we got home and Keith had a hand. It is based on ridding yourself of your cards, but to do that you have to have groups of the same numbers or runs, and you can’t start to put out cards until you can put out enough to add up to 51 points or more. You can add on to other players’ groups, so holding on to your cards is a risk but a defence against other people ridding themselves of their cards by building on yours. A miner's daily requirements: a Dudley for water and a steel sandwich box to keep rats and mice out.
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