The ‘Hell Pit’ of Seaham (NZ410496)

[From an article which appeared in the Sunderland Echo of 22nd July 1992]

The Seaham Colliery Disaster of 9^th September 1880 was one of the worst of its kind in history. One hundred and sixty-four men and boys died after an explosion swept through the pit-workings, thereafter dubbed ‘Hell Pit’ by the press at the time of the occurrence.

The episode is rife with tales of individual heroism and sad stories of epic proportions. Among them, the tale of one George Dixon, who chose to stay in the devastated pit with his young injured putter boy rather than take the chance to escape. “Nay, I’ll stay with the lad,” he was heard to say – his last words, as it happened, for their two bodies were later found lying together.

One other touching find was a board found next to four bodies with the words, written in chalk: “Five o'clock: we have been praying to God.” And, on the reverse: “The Lord has been with us. We are all ready for Heaven.” The board now stands in nearby Christ Church.

Perhaps the most heart-wrenching tale of all, however, is that of miner Michael Smith, who scratched a last message to his wife, Margaret, upon his tin bottle with an old nail the following: “Dear Margaret, there was 40 of us all together and some was (sic) singing hymns, but my thoughts was on my little Michael that him and I would meet in Heaven at the same time. Oh dear wife, God save you and the children, and pray for me.... Oh, what an awful position we are in.”  ‘Michael’ was Smith’s own 18-month-old child who had died that same morning....

(my thanks to J.C.Coyne for this piece)

New Hartley Pit Disaster (NZ308768)

On 16th January 1862 one of the worst mining accidents in British history befell the workforce of New Hartley Colliery, a little to the north of Seaton Delaval in the South-East Northumberland Coalfield. A total of 204 men and boys – from age 10 to 70 – lost their lives underground when they became trapped and suffocated before help arrived. The catastrophe was to lead to a notable change in the industry’s working practice across the globe.

At the time of the accident the mine was served by a single shaft, as was the norm. This sole point of access took the miners to and from the coalface, and was the means by which both materials and air entered and exited the bowels of the earth. The mighty pumping beam cast its great shadow over the shaft head – as it did countless collieries the world over – its job being to clear the pit of flood water. And on that fateful winter morning its brittle cast-iron form snapped under the strain, sending 20 tons of metal thundering down the 12ft-square shaft, taking all with it. The beam, it is believed, had suffered a fatal fracture a week beforehand when it was rather heavy-handedly reassembled after its bearings had been replaced.

The debris which blocked the miners’ only means of escape proved impenetrable to the desperate rescuers over the coming days; the sounds of the entombed men and boys below a constant torment. After repeated collapses, the cause was lost – the trapped workers eventually falling silent. A little over a week later their bodies were finally recovered, many in quiet and peaceful repose, as if sleeping after a day’s hard work – brothers arm in arm, and fathers and sons in touching embrace.

Some good came of it, though. Such was the national public outcry that it was decreed that henceforth all mines should have two separate means of access and escape. Furthermore, the incident led to the establishment of the Miners Permanent Relief Fund – a fund that has since conferred benefit upon thousands in the mining community, including widows, orphans, injured workman and the aged.

The monument (pictured) stands in St. Alban's churchyard in Earsdon.

Read more here and here.

 

Radcliffe R.I.P (NU270025)

Though it is still marked on the map, the village of Radcliffe effectively no longer exists. It once lay a little to the east of the current A1068 a mile south of Amble, populated by some 700 folk, all of them pretty much tied to the local colliery of the same name. It was your typical mining community until around 1892, when the discovery of a fault in the seam, followed by fire and flood, made the extraction of coal uneconomical. The engineers tried sinking shafts at nearby Newburgh and Hauxley, but these, too, proved to be problematic. They struggled on at Radcliffe as best they could, until the towel was finally thrown in in 1962.

In 1965, plans were drawn up for the much more economical form of coal extraction from the area, namely, opencast mining. To effect this, it was necessary to clear the aging housing and pit-head buildings of Radcliffe, and this was completed by 1971. Those that had not already moved were relocated to Amble – and onto an estate named the Radcliffe Estate, a complex which itself contains many streets named after those of the old village.

Opencast operations have themselves now passed into history, and the area generally given over to agriculture. A few buildings survived the demolition of c.1970 – a garage, a farm and a few private dwellings along the A1068, but nothing of the main village in the fields to the east.

The Radcliffe War Memorial, erected in 1928 and added to after WWII, was relocated to Amble Town Square during the village’s dismantlement.