YORKSHIRE MAIN COLLIERY

The picture below was taken of me on the sunday before I started work at markham main for three months underground training having left school three weeks before.

Note the chain on the fencing in the background (this was borrowed from Yorkshire Main by my dad) the pit bottom overman.

After I had finished my training at Markham Main I was transferred to Yorkshire Main, given a yellow trainees helmet and told to report to the pick hole in the pit bottom on the monday morning.  I was asigned an instructor for twelve weeks and that is where I was to stay, basically giving tools out to face workers as they passed the pick hole on their way to the districts.  Not very exciting, but I got to know alot of miners and made lots of friends who I gave the best and sharpest boring picks to.  These were small picks or blades that were fastened onto the end of long drills about six foot long that were used to drill holes in the rock on the coal face rips, before filling with powder and blasting.  At the end of the week they would give me their old blunt ones and I would give them new sharpened ones.  I only left the pit bottom once in that twelve week period.  My dad who was the pit bottom overman, came and picked me up on a diesel loco and took me for a ride into the mine.  I remember he took me up the old east main, where a group of men were taking rings down to re-use in other parts of the pit.  There was a steel strike on at the time and the steel rings were hard to come by.

After that twelve week period I started working in the ventilation department.  I basically went all over the mine taking gas samples and sending them to Manvers Main for testing.  It was a very exciting but lonely job for a sixteen year who had just left school.  I had to go into parts of the mine that no one else ever ventured.  Some of the districts dated back to the beginning of the mine, where there were pony stables and wooden props holding up the roof or no roof supports at all.  One of the places I had to go was the north booster fans, a very lonely but excessively noisy place.  The older miners used to wind me up that someone called "Darky" had hung himself there and I could not wait to get in there and back out again.  On one occasion while passing through the air doors at the side of the fans I found someone asleep on the floor.  I do not know who was more scared, him or me.  He ran one way and I ran the other.  On another occasion, while at the very bottom of the number two shaft in the old pit bottom I had just come through an air door into total darkness expecting no one to be there, when all of a sudden a light appeared from no where.  It was my dad Ernie with a cup of tea in his hand.  Where he had come from I dont know? , it seemed very strange meeting my dad 905 yards under ground.

One of the most frightening jobs I had to do while in the ventilation department was to attached a butterfly plate on a stopping.  This was an old roadway which had been sealed off with a 20ft thick wall, apart from a 2.5ft diameter pipe running through it.  I then had to crawl through the pipe with the folding butterfly plate into the old roadway, fix it on the end which sealed the roadway off and then crawl out backwards.  A very claustrophobic and hot job!  On another occasion, again in the old pit bottom, I was sent down to take an air sample, there were lots of people around which was very unusual, most of them I did not recognise.  It turned out they were accident inspectors and police investigators, someone had jumped out of the cage on its way down, to commit suicide and they were taking him out in lots of plastic bags!!  It was a job that certainly got you around the pit and I probably saw more of the mine that more of the older miners, who had only worked on three or four coal faces in all their working lives. I walked nearly every roadway in the mine from X 22s near to Maltby to B 43s which was near Rossington.

After a few years I moved onto the haulage department where I could earn more money.  My time here was spent moving around the pit wherever they wanted me to drive the conveyor belts.  I never had a permanent district at first and used to have to look at a black board in the pit bottom outside the box office, at the start of every shift to see where I was to go.  We were called (market men).  After a few months I was sent one night to D07s to drive the stage loader.  It was the last shift on the face and all the men were moving together to a new face under construction, called D20s, except the stage loader driving who was retiring and I was asked if I would like to take his place.

I worked on the stage loader for several months until a place came available on the material gang.  There were five of us working both gates taking materials to the coal face.  Once the face had moved in a fair distance, the deputy used to let us go across the coal face instead of going all the way round to the other gate.  I remember on one occassion standing at the barrier rip and shouting if we were ok  to come through to the men on the pack. "Yes" was the reply, so we quickly crawled through the rip onto the face, as soon as we were on the face within a few seconds, the hole of the barrier rip collapsed.  We were very lucky not to have been buried under it all.  On another occassion, again at the barrier rip, we were having our snap with the barrier rippers.  All the machinery was off and it was silent, then there was the loudest BANG! I have ever heard and all the roof supports (Rings) from the face, back 15 to 20 rings up the gate, dropped about 3ft in an instance!! The roof came down and we were all thrown up in the air, apparently the deputy said that rock strata above had broken causing the weight to come on in a big way.  The older miners said they had never seen anything like in all their years.

When there were no materials to deliver to the coal face, we used to go wandering around the old roadways that were near our coal face.  D20s was in an old area of the pit and there were lots of old and abandoned roadways left open only for ventilation.  Although we knew we should not do it, we used to wander all over the place,  I do not know how we did not end up getting lost.  Another favourite pastime that lasted a few years, started one day when a work mate caught a mouse in his snap bag! We had bet to see who could catch the most mice and whoever caught the most on the Friday was the winner and was given a £1 by the rest of us.  We eventually, all bought a mouse trap and were catching 20 plus mice each per week.  I think I remember the record being about 30 for a week?.

At the top of the barrier gate we had a secret stash of water notes, or at least I did! .Water notes were pre-printed notes given out by the deputies which allowed you to leave the mine, either early or at the front of the queque.  They were given to men who worked in wet conditions or had been wet by bursting pipes etc.  They were like gold dust down the mine and very hard to get hold of, they used to change the colour every week so you did not know which ones to use, just to trick you.  I had a good supplier with inside information, my DAD, Ernie the pit bottom over man.