By Paul Fillingham and Dr David Amos

32 Pages·2013·28.67 MB·English

By Paul Fillingham and Dr David Amos
Contents
Headstocks 4
Flame Safety Lamp 10
Union Banners 12
Cap Lamp 18
Introduction Motties 19
workers, their families and the public.
It explores the significance of ten Self-Rescuer 20
‘The History of Coal Mining in 10 selected objects and how they have Snap Tin 21
Objects’ is part of an Arts and contributed to the development of the
Pit Tips 23
Humanities Research Council, coal industry and coal mining culture.
Pit Pony 25
Creative Economy Knowledge
Coal 27
Exchange Project, led by the Univer- The study comes at a pivotal time in
sities of Nottingham, Leicester and the history of the coal industry in
Nottingham Trent: Archives, Assets Britain, with production capability
and Audiences: new modes to engage reduced to three working collieries
audiences with archival content and and many former mineworkers now
heritage sites is funded by the AHRC entering their twilight years.
and through match funding from the The project team enjoy close ties with
Universities. these communities and have previous
experience in academic research and
‘The History of Coal Mining in 10 the development of heritage projects
Objects’ team consists of Dr David and cultural trails.
Amos - Heritage Officer at Bestwood
Winding-Engine House, Dr Sarah The project website incorporates
Badcock Associate Professor, Depart- archive material and is supported by a
ment of History, University of Not- range of social media channels, print www.miningheritage.co.uk
tingham and Paul Fillingham Digital and exhibition material in order to
Producer and Director of Thinkamigo. facilitate wider public engagement.
It is hoped these assets will continue to
The project pilots the use of digital develop and provide a focus for future
technologies to engage former mine- activity. www.facebook.com/miningheritage
Heritage Officer Dr David Amos Ex-miner from Bilsthorpe Heritage Society Digital Producer Paul Fillingham talks to
presenting at the D. H. Lawrence Centre. explains mining memorabilia. former mineworkers.
Heritage Events
In September, a Steam Heritage Event The team also gave presentations at
at Bestwood Winding-Engine House the 2013 D. H. Lawrence Festival
In June, the Tin Hat Centre, in Selson captured the spirit of the traditional which included the debut of a
hosted talks by the mining heritage Miners Gala with music from Best- ‘Headstocks’ video, featuring respect-
project team. The event was supported wood Colliery Black Diamonds Brass ed local historan and retired mining
by Bilsthorpe Heritage Society who Band. surveyor, Robert Bradley.
displayed photographs and objects
from their collection. The event provided a further oppor- Some members of the public brought
The promise of a mining-themed tunity for public engagement, sharing in family photographs and
evening combined with a pie-and- stories, displaying images and offer- documents for identification and
peas supper proved so irresistible that ing hands-on contact with memora- scanning and in some instances,
tickets for the event sold out in just bilia related to the former Notting- historic material was donated to the
a matter of days. hamshire and Derbyshire coalfields. University of Nottingham archives.
Steam Event at the Bestwood Winding-Engine House Photographic display in the Dynamo House.
3
Headstocks
Bestwood Colliery headstocks.
Headstocks have come to symbolise At first, people took coal from the Babbington, Selston, Pinxton,
coal mining communities and coal surface (opencast mining) where extending into Derbyshire.
production. Thirty-five years ago they found coal at the ‘Basset-edge’
there were some twenty-five pits where coal ‘outcropped’ to the
in operation across seam. Shallow pits were dug to
Nottinghamshire, each one (with extract the coal, which led onto the
the exception of the fully-enclosed development of ‘bell-pits’.
tower winders) clearly identified by These went a little deeper and when
the sight of the headstock wheels working became too difficult the
turning. The development of the miners simply dug another one
headstock was born out of the nearby. Many bell pits were un-
need to exploit deep coal seams covered during construction of the
and is very much a product of the M1 Motorway which ran through
industrial revolution. the outcrop area: Trowel Moor, M1 Motorway, 1968
4
Outcrop to the seam Bell-Pit & windlass Horse Gin
As bell pits got deeper, hauling The windlass was replaced by the Steam-powered winding engines
coal to the surface became more ‘horse gin’ a wooden structure brought huge gains in productiv-
difficult. The situation was im- consisting of a large horizontal ity. Theses engines were usually
proved by the introduction of a wheel powered by a horse, walking enclosed in brick-built winding
‘windlass’. This developed into in a circle underneath. houses which became a common
putting a ratchet on the wheel The mechanism was attached to a sight around the country.
which meant you could let go of smaller wheel with a rope extend- Winding engines were operated
it without the load tumbling into ing down the shaft. The horse gin by boys and had ropes extending
the shaft. As a result, women and increased production and facilitated to a vertical wheel located above a
children could wind coal to the development of a more robust shaft single shaft that was used to trans-
surface. This practice is illustrated system as heavy timber supports port men and materials in and out
in the ‘Royal Commission on the could be transported into the mine. of the mine. In some collieries a
Employment of Children in Mines diagonal ‘drift’ tunnel could be
and Manufacturies’ (1842) which With the advent of the industri- dug to help transport coal to the
documented the plight of children al revolution, horsepower was surface independently of the
working underground. superceded by the steam engine, miners and materials.
allowing even greater throughput
and deeper, more extensive under-
ground workings.
Horses were still used in the
production of coal but their role
shifted from the surface ‘pit-top’ to
the ‘pit-bottom’ where they were
used to haul materials around the
tunnels and transport coal-tubs Winding Engine
from the coal-face to the shaft and
out to the surface.
5
Single shaft coal mines were
outlawed by Act of Parliament
in 1862 as a direct result of the
Hartley Colliery disaster in which
two-hundred-and-four men and
boys lost their lives. The accident
was caused when the cast iron
beam of the steam engine split in
two, sending tons of debris down
the pit shaft.
Hartley Colliery Disaster, (Illustrated London news, 1864)
The shaft at Hartley Colliery was
divided by a wooden ‘brattice’ -
the move towards twin shafts. Babbington, Cinderhill, High Park
a fairly inefficient ventilation
This configuration also brought (Eastwood), Watnall and Hucknall
system designed to allow fresh air
improved ventilation; with fresh collieries.
to pass down one side, returning
air passing down one shaft and ‘They found that over the years, the
foul air up the other. The brattice
contaminated air being expelled wood would tend to rot and become
collapsed into the mine when the
through the other. This meant unstable and unsafe. At Mansfield
beam engine broke.
that miners could dig deeper and Colliery, the Inspector of Mines said
further underground. Tandem “this is unsafe” and he made them
‘There was no way these men could
headstocks were also developed at stop winding coal.
survive, until they could move all
the debris from the shaft, which
they tried. But by the time they got
down there, they had all suffocated.’
(Bradley, 2013).
The new legislation compelled
colliery owners to sink two shafts
instead of one, so that in the event
of a similar accident, the miners
would have a means of escape.
Tandem headstocks made from
pitched pine, like the ones pre-
served at Brinsley are typical of
the period and clearly illustrate
Tandem headstocks at Brinsley.
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David Amos and David Stewart filming at Bestwood Winding House. Mining Historian, Robert Bradley.
But they were very clever, they built These new pits went straight to stopping, with often fatal
a steel framework over the top of lattice frameworks which were consequences for the men inside.
the wooden one and the Inspec- incredibly strong and commen- King devised a copper pin that
tor let them keep winding with a surate with the depth of the shafts would break if it passed a certain
small wheel under this framework’. which were going much deeper: point at the top of the headstock:
(Bradley, 2013). Blidworth, Bilsthorpe, Ollerton Releasing a sprung claw to hold
and Clipstone all went straight to the cage in-position. The device,
Steel lattice frameworks began latticework. known as the ‘King’s Patent’ saved
to replace the old pitched pine thousands of lives.
headstocks. The changeover from ‘They weren’t allowed to do any
wood to steel occured throughout other, the inspectorate wouldn’t A similar system was developed in
the 1920’s: Pleasley and Hucknall allow it!’ (Bradley, 2013). Lancashire by Edward Ormerod
were both converted but Brinsley and either of these two systems
did not change as it was assumed Born out of the need to overcome have been employed in mines all
that the mine would close. common problems , many techni- over the world.
However, the shafts at Brinsley cal solutions were devised by the
were retained as an escape route mineworkers themselves.
View headstocks video
(‘second means of egress’) for At Pinxton, John King who
Selson Colliery. worked in the Blacksmiths work-
shop on the engineering side of
Throughout the twenties, the the colliery developed a
Nottinghamshire coalfield mechanism to overcome rope
expanded north-east of Mansfield ‘overwinds’ - where the cage would
into the Dukeries. keep coming up the shaft without
www.miningheritage.co.uk/headstocks
7
The colliery companies were
sensitive to the welfare and
education of their workforce.
At Blidworth, plans drawn-up by
the Newstead Colliery Company
included 1,200 houses with
gardens, sports grounds, shops
and schools. They also
commemorated the work of the
writer James Prior whose novel
‘Forest Folk’ had recorded village
life around the time of the Luddite
uprisings (c 1811 - 1816).
‘The Forest Folk Hotel’ - a centre-
piece of the village featured leaded
Colliery Sinkers at Bilsthorpe, 1927. (Bilsthorpe Heritage Society). windows depicting themes from
the novel. Initial development at
Blidworth did not go to plan:
After the First World War, Tunnel collapse and flooding were
As the village lay between existing
Nottinghamshire saw huge a constant threat but the work
collieries at Newstead and
expansion of its coalfields. proved highly lucrative. As local
Rufford, it was not thought nec-
The new mines were complimented labour became absorbed by work
essary to sink exploratory bore
by construction of ‘model villages’ at the new collieries, the county’s
holes. Unfortunately, the strata
improving living conditions for agriculture went into decline.
proved different from that of its
many working people. Private
mining companies like the Stanton
Iron Works and Newstead Colliery
Company (responsible for Bilst-
horpe and Blidworth respectively)
effectively annexed the county’s
existing rural settlements.
When sinking began, many itinerant
workers were Irish labourers. It was
dangerous work extracting earth
and rock and lining the shafts with
brick and prefabricated ‘tubbing’. Colliery village, Blidworth, Notts. 1980.
8
neighbours and at one point the ‘Mechanisation developed strongly
whole village was boarded-up in the nineteen fifties. And created
amids fears that coal would never other problems in winding coal,
be found in the area. because you couldn’t sort it out
down the mine, you had to sort it
Collieries established between the out on the pit top, which consisted
war years employed steam winding of the screening and then a washery
engines to drive the wheels that plant, which gave different grades
were held aloft the lattice-steel that were put into trucks and taken
frameworks. These towering away to different industries, for
structures with their attendant pit power station or domestic use.
Sutton Colliery, North Notts.
chimneys and sprawling work-
shops came to dominate the local All mining underground needs Steam winders were eventually
landscape. There were huge social materials to be taken onsite: These replaced by electric winding
changes too, the local population were things like; arches, timber, engines and modern collieries
expanding with an influx of expe- steel props and ‘chocks’ (hydraulic such as Cotgrave, Ashfordby,
rienced workers arriving from the supports) as we call them - ‘walking Selby and Harworth took on a
declining coalfields of Scotland and chocks’ - all automated - Huge new form. These so-called ‘tower
the North East. machines that had to be taken winders’ consisted of a vertical
down the shaft to cut the coal. engine sitting directly above
After World War Two as unskilled, The amount of stuff that went into a the shaft and were enclosed in a
pre-mechanised working methods pit was unbelieveable, compared with concrete tower; its function now
‘stinting’ were phased out. Mine- the amount of coal that came out.’ hidden, because you could not see
work became more skilled. (Bradley, 2013). any headstock wheels turning.
The National Coal Board set up
under the Coal Industry Nation-
alisation Act (1946), sought to
standardise working practices,
conditions and pay. An important
part of this new organisation was
the NCB Film Unit which not only
produced newsreels for public
consumption but created a whole
range of training films to improve
safety and educate its workforce.
Trepanner at Caphouse Colliery, Wakefield. Tower winders at Harworth, Notts.
9
Flame Safety Lamp In the early days, miners used
candles, flaming torches and
oil lanterns to light their way.
As mines got deeper, this type
of lighting presented enormous
dangers due to the presence of
methane gas which is potentially
explosive in high concentrations
when exposed to a naked flame.
Underground explosions were
common but the impetus to find
a solution to the problem came
from the Felling Pit Disaster of
1812, in which ninety-two men
and boys were killed.
The principle of the flame safety
lamp was presented by Sir Hum-
phrey Davy in 1815. Although
‘Davy Lamp’ is the common term
used by most people to describe
the device, the design was based
on the pioneering work of George
Stephenson and Dr William Reid
Clanny. However, Davy, an estab-
lished figure within the Royal
Society was awarded a £2,000
prize for the invention. It was only
later in 1816 that Stephenson’s con-
tribution was officially
acknowledged by the Royal Society.

In 1816, Clanny published a paper
‘Practical Observations on Safety
Statue at the summit of Teversal Pit-tip, Lamps’. He also made improve-
the highest point in Nottinghamshire.
10