Keeping alive memories of a lost way of life in the mines
LISTENING TO ex-miners Bill Heszelgrave and Dennis Best, now both in their 70s, reminisce about their days down the pit is nothing short of a privilege.
Dennis was the last pony driver at Peckfield Pit in Micklefield, near Leeds. He went to work there in 1961 after leaving school and recalls: “It was hard and dirty and a little bit dangerous but it was good. Of all my years of working, my pit pony days were my most enjoyable.”
He left the mines after seven years to work on erecting overhead cables and then spent 40 years as a scaffolder but his time as a pony driver had a huge impact upon him – he even has a tattoo of one of his former charges, Silver, on his leg. “If you don’t get attached to a pony, or they are wary of you, you can have a lot of problems when you are down the pit. They can run off and when you find them, everything is tipped out. You have to trust them and they have to trust you.”
Bill concurs: “They were very clever animals, normally you would load them up with two tubs but if you ever put three on, they knew and they would back up and kick the chain off.”
Pit ponies make up just a part of an exhibition at Lotherton Hall which aims to recall a way of life which has completely disappeared. The various displays sit alongside memorabilia and even audio logs containing firsthand accounts from miners and their families of what life was like during mining’s heyday.
These reflect not only the hardships and countless disasters which affected them but the seemingly unbreakable bonds forged in the various communities which grew up around each pit.
Irene Kilbride and Trish Bazely are from the Lotherton Hall History Group, which is responsible for compiling much of the material. Irene’s husband’s great grandfather, Thomas Kilbride, came over from Ireland seeking work in 1880, along with many others. She says: “I think it’s so important to chronicle all these stories, this way of life which is gone now. It’s about community. There are people in Garforth whose relatives worked down the mines. They worked in appalling conditions, it’s no wonder they died in their 40s and 50s.”
Trish adds: “They would never leave anyone down below, even the little ponies helped them because they could feel the shudders in the earth and they would hold the men back and then a couple of minutes later, the roof would come down. Everyone of them deserves a medal, they looked after each other, the families banded together whenever they needed anything. We’re proud of the exhibition, because it shows people what life was like and it wasn’t all that long ago.”
Bill began at Peckfield in 1954 and later worked at several other mines across the North of England, including Gascoigne Wood Mine, part of the Selby Coalfield, where he recalled: “We tunnelled nine miles and it was dropping all the time. They said we were so far down that they could have dropped the atomic bomb on top and we wouldn’t have felt it.
“Some men used to work down pit with a wooden leg; and I remember one man was still working down there at 80. Once there was a roof fall and it was well over 50m long and all the men on the other side could not get out. We eventually devised a way to free them but it took us over three months to get that open again and that was working round clock and weekends.”
Stephanie Davies, assistant curator of community engagement at Lotherton Hall, says: “Mining was such a big part of the community for so many generations and today it’s as if it was never there. So, not only do we want to give honour to the people who lived that life but also to show the next generation. There are still people around who were miners, so it’s all first hand. A lot of these stories have never been told.”