Remembering the 156 who died in pit disaster
HISTORIAN MERVYN EDWARDS LOOKS AT OUR MINING
LAST year, I set off on the trail of the Minnie Pit Disaster of January, 1918, and pulling on my trainers, jogged over to the churchyards at Audley and Alsagers Bank in order to locate gravestones associated with North Staffordshire’s most tragic mining disaster.
I also dropped by at the Minnie Pit memorial site in Halmerend and glimpsed an unfolding story that has much to do with how Halmerend interprets its present through its past.
We should note that 155 boys and men between the ages of 14 and 62 died in the disaster.
The deaths of the miners effectively left 67 widows and 132 independent children. Hugh Doorbar, a rescuer, also died.
It was 18 months before the last body was recovered, with Halmerend chapel serving as a morgue.
The story of the disaster fires the usual questions at recorders and historians, those of us in the business of interpreting the past.
There would have been moments of the people of Halmerend trying to make sense of the unexpected.
We know that there were instances of lionhearted heroism. There were ‘what ifs,’ and ‘what might have beens,’ key moments and tipping points that occurred in the concatenation of circumstances that resulted in the tragedy.
Thomas Brockley of Halmerend was a survivor. He told the press in January, 1918 that he had been working in the ‘Rearers’ around 500 yards from the main shaft.
He revealed: “I was working at the face when we heard a dull roar like thunder. We put on our coats and began to leave. Some went towards the ‘Bursted Onion’ shaft, and I made for the main shaft.
“At the bottom of the South Pit I came into thick smoke, and for thirty yards had to grope my way along the wall.
“Men and boys were lying in the gutters at the side of the haulageway, but the pit, you know, is a very wet one, and the poor lads were lying unconscious and slowly drowning. I pulled ten of them out, and five were dead.
“The others I left on the haulage way with sleepers under their heads so that they would have a chance of getting fresh air. I then went along to the cabin, where there is a telephone, and telephoned to the pithead to tell them that there were men down there.
“I gave them something to drink, and stopped with them until the arrival of a party of men who were working in another section of the mine – the Four Foot Way – which was not touched by the explosion. We then got them out safely. One of them – Arthur Jones – I brought along with me, for he was so dazed that he had to be helped all the way. The others were unconscious.”
The unravelling events at Halmerend had reached a wide audience – as indicated by the fact that it was the Penrith Observer that printed Thomas’s eye-witness remarks, merely days after the explosion.
The newspaper further related: “Brockley’s story, though told in a very modest way, covers an act of uncommon bravery. He did not leave the men until 12 o’clock, and he ran considerable risk of being overcome by the effects of the afterdamp. When he reached the top he was in a state of nervous collapse.
“In another part of the mine the lives of many men were saved through the presence of mind of a foreman, Charles Greatbatch, who short-circuited the air in this district.
“Wilson Taylor, one of two brothers who were rescued, said he saw a flash of light and a great volume of smoke. ‘I saw a flame coming, and dropped behind a wagon. I think this saved my life, as Edward Downing, the fireman, who was with me, was killed on the spot.’ Altogether 11 men who had been gassed by the after-damp were rescued and all are recovering...”
An article appeared in The Graphic magazine a week after the tragedy, entitled The Staffordshire Colliery Disaster: How mine explosions can be prevented. I doubt whether wisdom after the event was quite what was needed in Halmerend in the immediate wake of the village’s heart-wrenching loss.
To systematically follow the trail of the Minnie Pit disaster, you have to jog a lot further than I did, as the deceased were buried not only in Audley and Alsagers Bank but also Ravensdale, Barthomley, Betley, Chesterton, Madeley, Silverdale, Nantwich and Kidsgrove.
To my mind, it is apropos that North Staffordshire’s greatest mining disaster should be ‘owned”’not merely by Halmerend but by so many outlying areas.
Recently, I returned to the Halmerend heritage site and talked to Brian Billings who lives in Station Road, Miles Green.
Brian, aged 76, found himself a busy man following the setting up of a committee whose aim was commemorate the 1918 disaster.
Brian has more heads than the mythical Hydra, beginning as a treasurer with the committee, then taking on the additional role of secretary and since then acting as a part-time chairman, too.
The Minnie Pit Centenary Commemoration Committee was established in November, 2017, aiming to establish permanent memorials on the old colliery site.
How have Brian’s passions been aroused by this community project, I posed.
“My father, Sidney Arthur Billings, was a miner for 47 years,” replies Brian, “initially starting off in privately-owned pits, some of which my mother’s family owned this being pre-nationalisation.
“He was like many fathers, who didn’t want his son to go down the pit – but I did, becoming an apprentice engineer.
“I did face training at Kemball Colliery in Fenton before working at Wolstanton in 1961-2 where I did some work on the underground headings that linked Wolstanton and Hanley Deep.
“After a couple of years in mining, I joined the Army.”
But what about Halmerend villagers themselves? Is there still an appetite to mark a tragedy that occurred more than a century ago, and how much of that fervour has been diluted by in-migration?
“Virtually every household in the village was affected by the disaster,” Brian explains.
“People didn’t travel very far to work in those days and most of the locals had someone in the pit that they knew. If you look at the names of the casualties, many of the same surnames survive in the village today. It is still very, very parochial, which is unsurprising for a former mining community.
“There has been a memorial mining service for as long as I recall. In the commemorative march we organised through the village in January, 2018, in excess of 600 people turned up from all over the world.”
Brian, being of mining stock, calls a spade a spade – and knows how to use one. He waves a brawny arm in the direction of the eyecatching heritage site before us.
“This site was a jungle at one time – overgrown and you couldn’t see the area of the capped shaft here,” he remembers. “We’ve put new paths in and made it accessible to the public, and there’s now disability access to the site. There was litter here, and few trees.
“We planted 156 saplings in order to commemorate each of the casualties. Number 156 recalls the rescuer, Hugh Doorbar, captain of the Birchenwood Colliery rescue team, who died as a result of faulty equipment.
“This land is owned by CISWO the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation - and was formerly land owned by the National Coal Board. CISWO allow the borough council to control it, so anything that we develop on this land has to be sanctioned by those two bodies.
“If you look at the cap of the shaft itself, we have plans to represent a mining headgear pit wheel that will be divided into six segments.
“Local schools have designed each of the segments, which we hope to have painted by the artist who works for the New Victoria Theatre, when funds permit.
“We’ve collected money through individual sponsorship, fund-raising football matches and a donation from the defunct Newcastle Civic Society.”
The heritage site is a little off the beaten track, and my view as an outsider is that it could easily be missed. It is a problem that is being addressed.
Brian said: “We have silhouettes of miners at the front of the site to highlight the location. We are also in the process of talking with the borough and county councils to secure brown directional road signs to the site.”
The village is determined to remember those coal-caked miners who gave their lives in order to put a rosy glow in the grate – as evidenced by continuing developments at the Halmerend heritage site. I look forward to my next visit.