Our mining heritage

Pit headstocks like those above used to be a common sight across Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire when I was young. We could see half a dozen of them from our back garden at my family home. They are the winding gear for the lift cages that took miners up and down to the deep coal seams. The last deep coal mine in the UK, Kellingley Colliery, closed in 2015 and there are now just a handful of open cast and small privately owned mines operating (although approval has been given recently for a new deep mine under the Irish Sea). Thankfully, some of the heritage has been preserved, notably at Caphouse Colliery, the National Coal Mining Museum, which is about 40 minutes drive from here. My camera club arranged a photography trip there, so I went along, although I've visited a couple of times before. There is lots to see above ground but the highlight, of course, is a tour below ground through part of the mine itself. 

Honouring the heritage is important for me. I grew up in a mining town in Nottinghamshire and my maternal grandfather and both my great-grandfathers on my mother's side of the family were miners, as were legions of their male relatives. Their careers spanned the period from the 1870s right through to the end of the Second World War. Mining was a 'reserved occupation' so they were at least spared conscription, though it was a tough and dangerous option and they all suffered respiratory problems in later life. My granddad had to leave the mines due to ill health and became a bus driver for a while but was crippled with chronic bronchitis and emphysema and died relatively young, at 66, as a result. 

Mines were originally privately owned by wealthy landowners, until the government nationalised the industry in 1947 after WWII. Safety was patchy and often poor and there were notable pit disasters. Safety lamps were invented in 1816 to try to prevent explosions caused by naked flames igniting 'fire damp' (methane gas). Even after electric lighting was introduced, flame safety lamps were still used to test for gas down the mines. I rather like them and the museum has quite a collection. I'd quite like one as a reminder of my family history; I might buy one one day. They come up for sale online.  

The museum illustrates some of its history with a few models of workers at strategic points. This one, sitting in the office at the weigh-bridge where loaded coal lorries were weighed, looked so realistic, with his pen and his sandwich, that at first I took him for an actual person!  

Clearly not an actual person but nevertheless a realistic and poignant depiction, this sculpture of a miner is displayed in the Museum's entrance: