All photos: Mark Harvey
UNITE Rural life
Once, at the heart of industry, was mining National Coal Mining Museum, Caphouse Colliery, Overton, Wakefield WF4 4RH
As it’s free to enter the National Coal Mining Museum, formerly Caphouse Colliery and Hope Pit in the beating heart of Yorkshire, visitors don’t need to dig deep. Local young schoolchildren and old are guaranteed as warm a welcome as the coal fires that long before central heating systems provided glorious relief from the cold outdoors.
Hauling, from hundreds of metres underground, millions of tonnes of combustible carbon rich black rock powered the technologies that enabled the first ever industrial
revolution that had a profound beneficial impact on people’s lives. But extraction was never easy, depending on the coal seam thickness and geology. It all helped breed a unique band of brothers, whose safety meant sticking together in difficult circumstances.
This is clearly demonstrated when helmeted visitors, whose requested donation of £7.50 is well worth it, descended in a small cage underground. The 140-metre drop was massively exceeded by most of Britain’s underground coal mines.
Enthusiastic, experienced ex-miners act as tour guides. From the off Andy Clayton, who was one of the last working miners, clocking off when Kellingley Colliery, Britain’s last working pit, closed in 2016, is keen to recapture the miners’ experiences. Their numbers peaked at 1,190,000 – 5 per cent of the total male UK workforce – after WWI. Despite the dangers, Andy loved being a coal miner “due to the craic and friendships forged”.
He was delighted when he began working at the NCMM a year ago. “I like trying to keep coal mining heritage alive especially for youngsters who don’t know what coal is but which combined with steel built this country.” Andy is also pleased to welcome many ex-miners as visitors.
Arthur – former underground electrician
The underground trail that follows begins by returning to before 1844 when women and children under 10 were banned from working
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underground. This was the first time that the owners of capital had been prevented from doing exactly as they wanted and came just two years after the first ever General Strike by over a million workers nationally.
A father is seen digging out the coal using a pick, the mother shovels the coal into a heavy wagon and shoves it hundreds of yards for it to be taken to the surface. En route, their young daughter opens and closes the trap door being used to prevent the spreading of noxious gases.
Fortunately, things improved over the succeeding years. Andy explains how wooden props to keep the roof up were replaced by hydraulic ones and bars.
Extracting coal went from “using hand tools and then drilling and blasting and then finally we got modern machines.” All of which can be viewed on the hour-long tour that includes models of pit ponies that after 1844 were used to pull coal to the shafts to be transported to the surface. “Miners loved them.”
During Andy’s time at Kellingley there were three fatalities. Similar tragedies took place elsewhere.
This is brought home by former schoolteacher Nicola Harrison, a keen volunteer within the colourful Mining Lives Exhibition that is of the many galleries that tell the story of coal mining.
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