YORKSHIRE MAIN COLLIERY

The following is an extract from the Doncaster Gazette of 1970 in which it reported on the prospects and current situation if five local Doncaster Mines, they were Askern, Bentley, Markham, Rossington and Yorkshire Main.

Of Yorkshire Main the report started with the headlines:

 

Yorkshire Main Colliery is bent on celebrating this years Diamond Jubilee in fine style.  With the start of work on a vast new reserve, the Swallow Wood Seam, it's planning to achieve a simple objective: a million tons output and a million pounds profit a year.

That may not sound so impressive when you remember the pit first produced a millions tons of coal way back in 1923 and in 1939 it achieved a record output of 1,138,512 tons, but those were very different days.  The labour force today, 1,870 men is roughly half of what it once was and that means, to achieve the objective, one man today must be twice as productive as in the past.

As with so many other pits, Yorkshire Main has invested heavily over the last few years in expensive labour-saving machinery.  It is now fully mechanised and while improvements still have to be made, notably in man riding, the pit is edging into top gear.

Over the last few years Yorkshire Main has undergone, and is still undergoing, some of the most dramatic changes in its proud history.

Not surprisingly, breaking away from traditional methods of work and switching to modern techniques have had unsettling affects, but the revolution has never been an easy process.  Disturbing as some changes have been, such as the four-shift working, men and management at the pit seem by and large to have overcome the difficulties.

There are, it is true, more problems to face in the future, but there is no reason to think that these, too, will not be surmounted.

Redundancy is word with a capital 'R' in coal mining.  It is a word with more significance for miners that for any other type of industrial worker, but it is a word which can be forgotton at Yorkshire Main, says Deputy Manager (Labour) Mr John Rush.  There are no plans for making men redundant.

It is an assurance N.U.M secretary Mr Ian Ferguson is pleased to have. "There is a general uneasiness about the future of the pit at present.  I think morale will improve when we see the results of the changes," he told me.

Mr Ferguson aged 32, from Fife, was one of the transferees who came to the Doncaster area about five years ago when the future of his home pit looked insecure.  Perhaps that experience has tended to make him extremely sensitive to any talk by his workmates about uncertain prospects.

General Manager Mr Derek Stephenson is emphatic that there is no basis for gloomy view on the future.  "Our job will be to retain the strong work force, not to get ride of surplus men.  It will be done by natural wastage."

His confidence is unambiguous.  "I would say that that this pit has got one of the best prospects of this future of any pit in the Doncaster are.".

When mining starts in the new seam, which is fault-free, covers an area of one and a half by three miles and contains good quality coal, the faces should be among the most up-to-date in Britain.  Improved man-riding schemes will lead almost to the face, and cutting and handling the coal will be with the latest equipment.

Although there is much talk about the future at Yorkshire Main, what is happening even now is of interest.  Mr Stephenson, Manager for the last eighteen months says the benefit of change is already being felt. The fact that one of the pits face was in the area's Top Ten for production last month bears him out.

(Picture of Mr Fred Homford of Malin Drive Edlington, who believes he was the first man to sign on as a collier at Yorkshire Main when the pit started to produce coal in 1911.)

Socially Yorkshire Main must be one of the most lively pits in the area.

A new pavillion was built not long ago in the Welfare Grounds and at Granby Road, the miners have their own club.  This was built some years ago, when the transferee miners from Scotland and Durham got together and persuaded a brewery to let them have a new club near their homes.

Activities centering on the pit are varied and provide for literally all ages from very young to elderly, but of the many recreations open to miners and their families in Edlington, it is probably the brass band to which people point with most pride.  In eighteen months, under Bandmaster Mr Jack Argyll, it has moved from fourth to second division.  At Sheffield, in March, the band won the Yorkshire Brass Band Festival.

Looking after the elderly people who still live around the pit is a matter of pride for the various organisations in Edlington, each of which takes some responsibility for some section of the villages old folk.

It means more than the odd Christmas box, for excursions during the summer and regular little social occasions are arranged.

"Our old folk are as well looked after, or better, than any in South Yorkshire" several people told me with pride.

Edlington, you might say, is a community in the fullest sense of the word.