[Extracted from an essay written in 2007 by 11-year-old Tommie Hassall after he had visited – with his granddad – derelict mining cottages in a former South Yorkshire pit village.]
A flat cap hung on the back of the door which led upstairs and beneath it lying on the floor was a shiny tin with a handle. ‘That’s a snap tin,’ explained granddad. ‘Is that because it snaps together?’ I asked. ‘No, snap, food, that’s what they put in it!’ For a moment I thought I could hear the sound of picks chiselling at the coal underground. I remembered watching a mineworkers’ procession with my mum to mark twenty years after the last miners’ strike. I didn’t really understand then. It didn’t seem dark like the mines must have been. I just remember the vibrant colour of silk banners being held by groups of men swaying in a soft light and the sound of a band. I felt I had lingered in the room too long, there was something still and private here, something intimate and alive. The soul had been ripped from the heart of the village but locked in this abandoned cottage were memories and a way of life that would remain forever. I needed to go outside and I felt I had intruded on the past. Granddad followed, we pushed the door and made it secure. The light hurt my eyes for a moment, like a miner when he first comes out from underground and I knew that I had taken something from the past with me. This was a day I would never forget.
Banners, bands and marchers during the 2004 Yorkshire miners’ gala that Tommie witnessed in Barnsley.
The full essay won Tommie the Simon Beaufoy [children’s] Short Story Competition, established in honour of the award-winning screenwriter, whose films include The Full Monty, Slumdog Millionaire and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.
The onsetter signals to the winding engineman for the cage to be raised up the shaft. The miners about to ascend to light include boys barely tall enough to reach the safety bar: Denby, Derbyshire, c.1910.