COLLIERIES AND COALFIELDS
Coalfields post-1947
If your mining ancestor worked after nationalisation in 1947 it is important to be aware of the new administrative structure of the industry as this information may help with research, and certainly make the process much more understandable when placing him in context via official publications. On the morning of 1 January 1947 (known as Vesting Day), during what became one of the worst winters on record, posters appeared at every pit, declaring: ‘This colliery is now managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the people.’ Nationalisation concerned about 950 directly operated mines and 480 small mines employing fewer than thirty workers, which were allowed to functioned privately under license. A variety of other assets included large numbers of houses for miners and officials. Lord Hyndley, the NCB’s first chairman, and nine directors established eight Divisional Boards to administer the industry from headquarters at Hobart House in London. The new Divisions were as follows:
Scotland
Northern (Durham, Northumberland and Cumberland)
North-Eastern (Yorkshire)
North-Western (Lancashire, Cheshire and North Wales)
East Midlands (north Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, south Derbyshire and Leicestershire)
West Midlands (north Staffordshire, south Staffordshire, Shropshire, Cannock Chase and Warwickshire)
South-Western (south Wales, Forest of Dean, Bristol and Somerset)
Kent
The new NCB Divisions were divided into forty-eight smaller units known as Areas. The collieries, however, remained as basic operational units, with the managers responsible under the Coal Mines Acts for the safety and conduct of their pits. Despite its decline, in 1947 the coalmining industry remained the biggest single employer of labour in the UK, with about 800,000 workers; and had an annual turnover (from the pits alone) of £480m (roughly £12.45m today).
As a result of the rapid run-down of the industry from the 1960s, Areas and Divisions were amalgamated and allocated new names and/or numbers, until the British Coal Corporation (BCC) succeeded the NCB in 1987. When the Coal Authority took over from BCC in 1994 there were fewer than twenty deep mines still at work.
Lists of coal mines
Which pit or pits did he work at? Finding the name and location of mines where your ancestor worked (and indeed the coal owner, for record purposes) are crucial research requirements. But from the nineteenth century there were many thousands of pits, ranging from small ‘day-holes’ and drift mines lasting a few months or years, to large colliery complexes working for more than a century. The Coal Authority estimates that there are at least 168,000 old ‘mine entries’ known, an astonishing figure. Names also changed, especially through changes of ownership and mergers. Many pits were also known locally by slang or even comic names, wonderful allocations which especially occur in oral testimonies. I once interviewed an old miner who worked at ‘Bob’s Oyle’, which was Kilnhurst Colliery, situated near Rotherham in south Yorkshire, but the pit was known as Thrybergh Hall Colliery before nationalisation. Take care with the ‘life of pit’ dates. Sinking could take place over several years due to geological problems and wartime delays. Also, some pits continued for many months after official production closure, before total abandonment. Unfortunately some mines were included in official mineral statistics after they had closed. So care is needed. If your mining ancestor lived a short distance from a particular colliery, don’t assume that he worked there! Even in ‘one-pit towns’ such as Ashington, miners, for a variety of reasons might travel five, ten or more miles to work. This mobility increased with the development of both tram and special rail services during the early twentieth century; some colliery companies or enterprising carriers ran services especially for miners living away from their pit. As a first step it’s not a bad idea to check mine entries in trade directories, especially from the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
The extent of this book does not allow for complete listings but some of the most useful online and printed sources are:
• Victoria County Histories (VCH) (www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk). Colliery names and background information may be worth checking for your area – if available. The relevant published/part-published volumes include Cumberland, Derbyshire, Durham, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire. The VCH is based at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. The online information about Derbyshire includes a downloadable list of collieries operational from 1854—1881, taken from mineral statistics compiled by the Geological Survey. Digital versions of the VCH can also be accessed via the British History Online site (www.british-history.ac.uk).
• British Geological Survey (BGS) (www.bgs.ac.uk). The BGS produced annual lists of mines (by county, including owners etc) from 1854–1881 and these can be consulted at their Key worth library by prior appointment (a: BGS, Key worth, Nottingham NG12 5GG; t: 0115 936 3205; em: libuser@bgs.ac.uk). Information about current active mines is via a purchasable database on the Minerals UK website, see http://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/mines/dmq.htlm.
• Hunt’s Mineral Statistics. The 1854–1871 volumes (Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain) are available free on Google Books. Some libraries will house them, certainly national ones. HM Inspectorates’ Annual Reports. Official lists of mines were published from 1872 (to 1882) and are generally reliable though Hunt’s Mineral Statistics do contain omitted data. Ideally both should be consulted.
• Mining and Mineral Statistics, published annually for 1882–1896, as mine listings appear in the 1883–1887 volumes. A separate annual publication, the List of Mines, covers 1888–1938 and for some later dates.
• Colliery Yearbook and Coal Trades Directory. For 1922–47 (prenationalisation) and 1948–64 (NCB Divisions and Areas).
• Guide to Coalfields [London Colliery Guardian Co. Ltd], Lists of collieries by NCB Divisions and Areas (including useful small location maps of mines and administrative headquarters), from 1948–1980s.
Official statistical sources were published as Command Papers by Parliament and are therefore held in Parliamentary Papers in many research libraries. They can be accessed online at http://parlpapers.chadwyk.co.uk/home.do usually via the subscribing organisation. A list of primary mining statistical sources and where some can be found can be seen by reference to http://people.exeter.ac.uk/pfclaugh/mhinf/location.htm.
• The Coalmining History Resource Centre (www.cmhrc.co.uk) has an A-Z list of mines relating to all NCB divisional maps.
• The Durham Mining Museum (www.dmm.org.uk) has mine lists for Northumberland and Durham, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Yorkshire (North Riding) and part of Lancashire, for the years 1888, 1902, 1914, 1921, 1930, 1934, 1940, 1947, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1991. The site links to Ian Winstanley’s old coalmining history website (via rootsweb/ancestry.com free pages) for complete listings for all coalfield regions for 1869, 1880, 1908, 1918, 1938, 1945. Also linked are the online lists for 1896, produced by the Peak District Mines Historical Society (see below). The DMM’s lists are very useful because the detail may include pit locations, addresses, and names of managers, owners, seams – and the number of men employed.
• The Peak District Mining History Society Museum (www.pdmhs.com/MiningMuseum.asp), under ‘Resources’, currently has a mines index for 1896 for Derbyshire, Scotland, Wales, South of England, Midlands, North of England, compiled from the annual mines inspectors’ reports. The list has the mine name, situation, owner and postal address, manager and under manager’s name, number of workers employed and main coal seam worked.
• Colin Jackson’s mine database. Pit check collectors often have an encyclopaedic knowledge of colliery names, before and after nationalisation (1947). Colin Jackson’s latest (2002) A-Z List of Colliery Names, lists 5,822 collieries, includes the pre-1947 owner, coalfield situation and dates of sinking and closing (where known). This is an excellent reference compilation. It can be purchased from the bookshop at the National Coal Mining Museum for England (t: 01924 848806).
• Royal Commissions on Ancient Monuments Publications. The three Royal Commissions responsible for recording the built heritage in England (RCHME/English Heritage), Scotland (RCAHMS) and Wales (RCAHMW) embarked upon emergency programmes to record fast-disappearing mine sites. Three useful publications are: A. Ayris, and S. Gould, Colliery Landscapes. An aerial survey of the deep-mined coal industry in England (English Heritage, 1995) which usefully includes grid references and reference to the National Library of Air Photographs (part of the National Monuments Record); Welsh collieries are covered in Stephen Hughes, et al, Collieries of Wales, RCAHMW (1995); and for Scotland see M.A. Oglethorpe’s comprehensive Scottish Collieries. An Inventory of the Scottish Coal Industry in the Nationalised Era (RCAHMS, 2006), which has a county-by-county gazetteer of nationalised collieries with a site number linking each to the the RCAHMS database – and, remarkably, there’s a photograph of every colliery.
• National Coal Mine Museum for Wales (The Big Pit). An impressive list of c.1,500 Welsh mines can be seen if you visit the main exhibition at The Big Pit (National Coal Museum: www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/bigpit)
Maps for family history are often underused or even ignored. Not to obtain a detailed map showing the colliery where your mining ancestor and his mates worked, his route to work, and the adjacent or nearby village where he lived, would be a missed opportunity. Especially so since maps are fairly easily found, particularly from the second half of the nineteenth century. Which ones are the most useful? The Old Series (1805–73) of the old one inch to one mile Ordnance Survey maps, subsequent editions of the New Series and the modern 2 cm to 1 km [1:50,000] Landranger series record relatively few collieries/colliery sites. A recent ‘Pin the Pits’ campaign has gained some support for former, usually regenerated, pit sites to be marked with a suitable symbol on the popular/leisure OS maps, though space would surely limit inclusion to the larger collieries. The 2½ inch (1:25,000 Pathfinder) maps are more detailed, especially the early editions. Better still are the large-scale six-inch (1:10,000) and 25-inch maps, first issued on a county basis from 1856–1893. These will show the pit buildings, railway sidings, associated features such as coke ovens, brickworks, aerial flights, muckstacks and of course nearby streets and individual houses. Most central libraries and certainly county record offices will stock some originals which you can have copied quite cheaply – though it can be frustrating when your colliery falls between two or more sheets! Several companies also publish facsimile and scale-adapted OS maps. The growing series from Alan Godfrey (www.alangodfrey.co.uk) is particularly useful even though coverage, from c.1900, is not yet complete for the coalfields; do check this site on a regular basis as additions are made on a monthly basis. The Godfrey maps have the benefit of a short description, by a local historian, of the area; and as a further bonus usually reproduce extracts from a local trade directory, and therefore are of tremendous value for the family historian. Heritage Cartography (www.victoriantownmaps) may also be worth checking as they are producing high-quality town and village maps based on the early large-scale surveys of the OS which commenced in the 1840s. You can also view online OS maps of different periods via www.oldmaps.co.uk and purchase from the same. Cassini (www.cassinimaps.com) have in recent years reproduced historical OS one-inch maps enlarged and re-projected to exactly match the modern Landranger versions. The Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps (www.charlesclosesociety.org) is the authoritative site on British mapping and well worth consulting.
Mid-twentieth-century published town plans such as those produced by Geographia are also useful for showing the sites of the larger collieries. In the 1970s an 82-year-old retired mining engineer who attended one of my WEA local history classes plotted sixty colliery sites (as well as providing index card reference details for each pit) on a folded Geographia map. There are of course many kinds of regional and local geological maps and plans that may also be useful. From 1850, Inspection of Coal Mines Acts required the inspectors to ensure that plans of coal mines were available and effective. An accurate plan of any abandoned mine had to be deposited with the Secretary of State. Mine abandonment plans are now housed at the Coal Authority’s Mining Records Office in Mansfield (www.coal.gov.uk; t: 01623 637 233; em: thecoalauthority@coal.gov.uk) and there is a downloadable brochure regarding their services. Do check with them prior to making an appointment.
Very useful is The National Archives’ Maps for Family and Local History online guide which has links to the other British national archive sites and several English counties: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/maps/maps-family-local-history.htm.
Further reading
Charles Masters, Essential Maps for Family Historians (Countryside Books, 2009)
Richard Oliver, Ordnance Survey Maps. A Concise Guide for Historians (The Charles Close Society, 1993)
— The Historian’s Guide to Ordnance Survey Maps (The National Council for Social Service, 1964)
Colliery names
It’s worthwhile considering the origin of the name (or names) of the colliery where your ancestor worked. Many are descriptive, after a geographic or geological name or landmark, or the type of mine, for example Greencroft Tower Drift (N. Durham). Others are named after the owner or a famous person or event: Balaklava (W.Yorkshire). Euphemistic names are not uncommon, as well as the use of female Christian names: California (Wigan); Isabella (Northumberland). Where the word ‘Main’ is used (especially in Yorkshire), it refers to the famous Barnsley seam as the primary coal worked (or once worked).