James
Members
-
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by James
-
Sid Newman lived in No 1. Am I correct in assuming that Joyce Dagless is your wife’s sister? She worked at the glove factory and married Colin Hall who was undermanager at Bates Colliery and they moved to Smoky River coal mine when it opened in the late 60’s.
-
The Redpath's from Hollymount Square - Brian lived in No. 3 (or was it No. 2?) and his dad was called Fenwick. Robert lived in No. 53 and his dad was called Jimmy. Fenwick and his elder brother Jimmy both worked at the Doctor Pit.
-
Top right holding banner - Peter Muldoon 2nd from left front row - Jimmy Redpath Centre front row holding scroll - Anty Thompson I can confirm Lawrence Thompson and Stuart Young are correct. I recognise the others but cannot remember their names. They were committee members of the Doctor Pit branch of the NUM -
The woman at the front with her hands clasped together is Mary Wright, wife of Ernie, the parents of Billy and Mildred Wright -
I have entered the coordinates of the Francis Pit from an old map and the red map indicator should be its exact position. If you enter the coordinates shown on the photo on a GPS if should take you there.
-
Feel free to share any of my photos with other groups to gather as much information as possible about the photos. -
-
They are standing on what would become the Mechanics football field (Millne Park) and is now the car park. -
I’ve never heard of Bedlington Amateur FC but it’s a great photo with amazing quality. The photo mentions Price’s field at Hollymount and having grown up around Hollymount I looked closely at the photo to see where it was taken and it definitely wasn’t Hollymount. Before Hollymount Square was built there was a field between the Bell’s Place gardens and Hollymount Avenue but not big enough for a football field. At the top right of the team photo you can see the two chimneys of the Doctor Pit so the buildings behind the team are those down Vulcan Place and looking closely through the trees on the extreme right of the photo is the Whitley Memorial School. The photo I have attached of the school with the newly built houses of Hollymount Square would have been taken in the early 50’s (presumably taken from the church tower) and shows prefab classrooms that were only built in the late 1940’s. I have marked in green the spot where I am pretty sure the team lined up for the photo. Presumably the photo was taken at the football field where they played so it looks like it was on the field next to the school, part of which by the 1950’s were allotments. -
.png.8ed7f3d4753c93e5f45344da507f8d26.png)
The photo is taken from No 4 Old Colliery Row looking up towards the Black Bull. The gable end behind Mr Hemsted is No 6 Bell’s Place and this can also be seen in the google maps photo looking at the same view about 100 years later. The section of Bell’s Place that was demolished in the late 1940’s ran parallel and behind Old Colliery Row. To the right of the row were the toilets, and gardens. There was gas lighting and a couple of outside taps - no electricity. -
-
This photo taken by Willie Ward shows 3 miners ‘cavilling’. This was a system used by teams and individuals on ‘piecework’ whereby lots were drawn to decide on their workplace. The ‘cavil’ was the workplace number written on the piece of paper. The system prevented management favouring a particular team or individual and also meant that it was the luck of the draw whether you ended up in a section with good or bad conditions which could often affect your earnings. -
Old photo of Choppington Station
-
It was coal in the trucks not waste, The waste (overburden) from the opencast was put back in the “hole” and the raw coal transported to Bedside Colliery wash plant for cleaning. The photo shows the first Costain truck on the bridge.
-
I have no dates of the years that the Ewart Hill pit was in operation but the map shows it was disused in 1897. It had only one shaft 361 ft. deep and worked the Low Main Seam. Following the Hartley Colliery disaster in 1862 when 204 men and boys died of carbon monoxide poisoning, all collieries had to have at least 2 shafts so that in the event that one shaft was out of action or damaged in some way there was a second shaft for the underground workers to use as a means of escape. I assume from this that it must have closed before 1862. If anyone can download an earlier map of the Ewart hill area it may give some idea of when it was in operation. Long after the Ewart Hill Pit had closed, the Doctor Pit mined a connecting roadway to the shaft in the Low Main seam workings and used it as a downcast ventilation shaft. You can see the shaft “cap” (a concrete cover) from the road as you walk past the farm The photo shows the Low Ewart Hill farm that was demolished in the 1950's and the coal beneath it mined by the opencast. At the same time the road that used to pass this farm was diverted. This area is now the golf course.
-
In one of Evan Martin’s books, he says that Easton Homes was built in 1907 and was named after Emily Easton who financed the building of the 12 cottages as well as St John’s Church. She was a director of the Bedlington Coal Company, owners of the ‘Aad Pit’ (Bedlington ‘A’ colliery). The cottages were built for retired miners who had worked for the company for least 50 years. -
Before they moved to Shiney Row, Andy and Flo Turnbull lived at the “bottom end” in No 27 Bell’s Place with their sons Bill, Bobby and Andy and our family lived near to them. Florence says they kept chickens in the garden at Shiney row. At Bell’s Place they not only had chickens but they also had a pig that the neighbours helped to feed with waste food we called “slops”. I’ll not mention what happened to the pig but I think you can guess! I have been hoping for years to find a photo of Bell’s Place and I thought that perhaps Frances may have one passed on to her by her grandparents. Bell’s Place was demolished along with Old Colliery Row in the late 1940’s and Hollymount Square was built on that site. -
In the photo, No 1 is the first house with the shed in front of it. I assume the shed is in the side garden that Florence refers to. Being the end house it would have been the only one with a side garden. (I think Andy and Flo Turnbull lived there.) The Gardens on the left of the picture were the Doctor Terrace gardens. The Shiney Row gardens can’t be seen – they were on the south side of the row.
-
Shiney Row was numbered the other way; No 1 Shiney Row was nearest Glebe Row and No 49 was nearest the Doctor Pit. After making the Bedlington Miners Picnic in 1960, Ken Russell came back to Bedlington to film some scenes at Bedlington A colliery (The Aad pit) for his 1969 movie “Women in Love”.
-
In one of the photographs in her book she tells us her maiden name is Mary Bohills. -
HONEY SACK FARM. Could the farm have been fermenting mead? HONEY is the main ingredient in Mead. SACK is an old English term for fortified wine. According to Wikipedia, mead is also called HONEY WINE. If, in medieval times, wine was also called sack then honey sack and honey wine would have the same meaning. If this reasoning is correct (highly unlikely) then the farm's modern name would be Honey Wine Farm - sounds quite nice!
-
At the Doctor pit, in the early days, the main winder and the John Pit ventilation fan were driven by steam engines. As with all steam engines, each had a boiler in which coal was burnt to produce the steam to drive the engines and each had a chimney high enough to provide sufficient draft to efficiently burn the coal. The chimney of the main winder was 160 feet high and was demolished in 1921 when an electric winder was installed. I don’t know when the John pit fan was converted to electricity but the chimney was demolished in 1952. -
Never realised that they dropped the chimney in the way you described. I’ve attached a 3rd photograph that shows how it looked when it was down. -
HPW Before the plant in the photo was built there was an old plant on this site that washed output from the Aad pit. The “new” plant was built on the same site as the old plant and continued to use the same dump. The wash plant in the photo was about 10 year old when the photo was taken but the discard dump as you say had been in use for over 100 years. The difference with the new plant was that it washed coal from both the Doctor Pit and the “A” Pit. In James Tuck’s book he states that this was part of a modernisation plan at the time of nationalisation of the mines in 1947. I’ve attached another photo of the “new” plant looking from the other side of the plant. -
Martin Henderson was a deputy at the Doctor Pit but I'm sure he was still working in the 1960's. His brother George worked at the Aad Pit.
