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Last commercial pit in England closes today


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Although I feel sorry for the people losing their jobs, I feel nothing but a bitter resentment that the things still existed to today. There's a very good reason many of my dad and granddad's generation didn't even make it to retirement age and it's all to do with coal mining.

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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The community that was the coal industry is long gone, but one I miss.

Having worked as an accountant for the coal board, and the previous three generations of men on my dad's side all being miners, I grew up with that.

I miss that camaraderie.... that pit banter... the social aspect associated with those communities.

I oft walk round manvers lake. Its a lovely reserve for wildlife.. and protected by the rspb. It used to be the site of wath hump, and manvers and wath main collieries. It now bears no resemblance to how it looked 35 years ago. Its nice now.

But those 5,000 well paying jobs have gone. The area misses that too

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The impact on communities by the major industry being destroyed is terribly sad. We should deeply regret the loss of identity and self and money and community, and that not enough was done to support them and mitigate the impact.

But nobody should mourn the mines or the stuff they produced - the world is better off without them.

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Never understood it to this day,my mate ran a coal merchants in middle a barnsley for donkeys years,He went to southampton docks to bring 25 ton a coal at  a time, from thousands a miles away(colombia/usa/japan) and it were cheaper by a long way even after the transport costs.go figure.

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One bit where I lived converted an old pit into a country park, ground under the bings and put up some memorials. It’s gone from a vile eyesore of an area to a lovely nature park.

9BD6EB41-F04C-4284-8909-24277EF5F852.jpeg

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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1 hour ago, silverback said:

Never understood it to this day,my mate ran a coal merchants in middle a barnsley for donkeys years,He went to southampton docks to bring 25 ton a coal at  a time, from thousands a miles away(colombia/usa/japan) and it were cheaper by a long way even after the transport costs.go figure.

I think the difference in price was to do with how deep we had to dig for the coal by the time we hit the 70s and 80s?  We'd been digging coal at quite a rate for a long time by then.  Here in St Helens, before it was St Helens, the coal was so common that individual families used to mine it in their gardens. It used to be sitting on the surface.  

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47 minutes ago, ckn said:

One bit where I lived converted an old pit into a country park, ground under the bings and put up some memorials. It’s gone from a vile eyesore of an area to a lovely nature park.

9BD6EB41-F04C-4284-8909-24277EF5F852.jpeg

Same here in St Helens, although we haven't kept any of our workings.  The Dream sculpture dominates possibly our biggest former mine and the area around the sculpture is now covered in trees and pathways.  

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We have the national coal museum on our doorstep,cracking breakfast too.

Caphouse Colliery, originally known as Overton Colliery, was a coal mine in Overton, near ... from the 18th century until 1985. It reopened as the Yorkshire Mining Museum in 1988, and is now the National Coal Mining Museum for England.

        

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10 hours ago, silverback said:

We have the national coal museum on our doorstep,cracking breakfast too.

Caphouse Colliery, originally known as Overton Colliery, was a coal mine in Overton, near ... from the 18th century until 1985. It reopened as the Yorkshire Mining Museum in 1988, and is now the National Coal Mining Museum for England.

        

I briefly worked in the cost office there.

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15 hours ago, silverback said:

Never understood it to this day,my mate ran a coal merchants in middle a barnsley for donkeys years,He went to southampton docks to bring 25 ton a coal at  a time, from thousands a miles away(colombia/usa/japan) and it were cheaper by a long way even after the transport costs.go figure.

They Columbians and Aussies could open cast coal from seams as thick as 60m... so close to the surface to access costs were low. Wages costs in opencast are significantly lower than deep mined coal.

I remember in 1988 we were bringing coal to the surface at around £41/tonne. Spot price ex Immingham were as low as £29/tonne...for coal from abroad.

A gov decision to privatise the CEGB and open up the markets marked the end of the industry and even very profitable pits were closed.

I drive through the Barnsley and don Valley coal field every day. There are still some scars.... some evidence of our heritage still there but largely you would never know the coal industry ever existed.

 

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7 hours ago, Robin Evans said:

They Columbians and Aussies could open cast coal from seams as thick as 60m... so close to the surface to access costs were low. Wages costs in opencast are significantly lower than deep mined coal.

I remember in 1988 we were bringing coal to the surface at around £41/tonne. Spot price ex Immingham were as low as £29/tonne...for coal from abroad.

A gov decision to privatise the CEGB and open up the markets marked the end of the industry and even very profitable pits were closed.

I drive through the Barnsley and don Valley coal field every day. There are still some scars.... some evidence of our heritage still there but largely you would never know the coal industry ever existed.

 

 i played u11/and 13s at allerton bywater in 60s.i can remember a massive open cast drag line crane,you could see it coming thru swillington like a giant in the distance,amazing what they have done in that area now for bike riders and wildlife.i went a few months back and couldent fathem the  new roads and almost got lost in kippax.

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I was nursing in Doncaster a few years ago.... i went to a house across from the former Bentley pit which hadn't at that time been developed. It was just a derelict site. It was very sad. Echos of times past over a sorry site and the impact on that community over the last 30 odd years quite evident.

I'm caught here. Coal fired power generation is now a thing of the past.

But I do lament the opportunities for careers for the educationally gifted and not so gifted. The social values. The welfare. The social club, rugby teams brass bands etc

 

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Similar thing down in SW but Tin & Lead mines - my sister in law worked in Camborne and we went to TuckingMill valley park to eat fish and chips one day when visiting her. There were some black and white prints up of people manhandling trucks of spoil, looked at the legend underneath expecting a date in the late 1800's and it showed that it was taken in 1968 and it was at the time an Arsenic Works, part of South Crofty Tin mine and a Fuse factory for mining explosives. It explained how nothing had lived in the area it ewas so polluted before a lottery funded clean up

Originally children were sent into the arsenic flues run up the valley side to manually scrape off the arsenic crystals where they had formed

from Wiki

Within Tuckingmill Valley Park is a small island containing the remains of a chimney stack, brick scrubber building and collapsed flue. The buildings (circa 1905) are associated with the production of arsenic which was a valuable resource for Cornish tin and copper mines when production of the metals was declining and the mines were closing. More efficient calcining furnaces were built and the gases fed through convoluted labyrinths where they cooled and condensed on the flue walls. The walls were scraped and the deposits further refined to make 100% pure arsenic

 

 

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1 hour ago, SSoutherner said:

Similar thing down in SW but Tin & Lead mines - my sister in law worked in Camborne and we went to TuckingMill valley park to eat fish and chips one day when visiting her. There were some black and white prints up of people manhandling trucks of spoil, looked at the legend underneath expecting a date in the late 1800's and it showed that it was taken in 1968 and it was at the time an Arsenic Works, part of South Crofty Tin mine and a Fuse factory for mining explosives. It explained how nothing had lived in the area it ewas so polluted before a lottery funded clean up

Originally children were sent into the arsenic flues run up the valley side to manually scrape off the arsenic crystals where they had formed

from Wiki

Within Tuckingmill Valley Park is a small island containing the remains of a chimney stack, brick scrubber building and collapsed flue. The buildings (circa 1905) are associated with the production of arsenic which was a valuable resource for Cornish tin and copper mines when production of the metals was declining and the mines were closing. More efficient calcining furnaces were built and the gases fed through convoluted labyrinths where they cooled and condensed on the flue walls. The walls were scraped and the deposits further refined to make 100% pure arsenic

 

 

I’ve seen poldark. Those tin mines were struggling back in the 1700’s 😀

 

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I did my A levels in 79. I started work at the coal board 29.9.1979. There were 232 deep mines in the coal board at that time employing 250k underground worker plus all the ancillary staff, headquarters and area management, training, stores, workshops, scientific,  and transport staff etc. In total that would have been over 300k employees.... all earning bloody good money.

All those jobs have gone and they're never coming back.

The trails, parks and lakes are lovely and coal generation is politically and environmentally a thing of the past. But I really wish opportunities like that were still there in one form or another.

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On 18/08/2020 at 18:30, Robin Evans said:

 

But I do lament the opportunities for careers for the educationally gifted and not so gifted. The social values. The welfare. The social club, rugby teams brass bands etc

 

My sentiments are the same. My work involved visiting every mine in the North Yorks area and each of them had what you describe in that sentence, in particular careers for the not so gifted and educational opportunities for the ambitious. The sports and social side was superb. I look back acknowledging that times have moved on but at the same time privileged to have witnessed it and to have been a part of it. 

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On 19/08/2020 at 21:40, Rodill Rover said:

My sentiments are the same. My work involved visiting every mine in the North Yorks area and each of them had what you describe in that sentence, in particular careers for the not so gifted and educational opportunities for the ambitious. The sports and social side was superb. I look back acknowledging that times have moved on but at the same time privileged to have witnessed it and to have been a part of it. 

I worked at North Selby, Riccal, Whitemoor, Wistoe & Kellingley as a contractor between 1990 and 93.

Carlsberg don't do Soldiers, but if they did, they would probably be Brits.

http://www.pitchero....hornemarauders/

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28 minutes ago, Marauder said:

I worked at North Selby, Riccal, Whitemoor, Wistoe & Kellingley as a contractor between 1990 and 93.

Started at wath main. Then to manvers. Barnsley area hq. Then barnsley main.... then to coal House at donny before going to national hq when it moved to Eastwood Hall, Notts. I didnt last too long. They mostly felt that I thought they were a set of scabbing b'stards. This, despite keeping my council but it was 1988..... i finally move to the power station at grimey as project accountant there. 

Never has the peter principle been more appropriately applied. I am a much better nurse than ever I was an accountant 

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