The other day, hubby showed me a picture, a very old picture of a mining community, which brought many memories back to me.
The picture is taken at Lundhill Row, in the neck of the woods I came from and no longer exists. It brought back many memories of my childhood when I saw it. Although I have to say I wasn’t as old on the picture as the people that are shown there. Or I’d have not only pushed the daisies up, I would have pushed every flower up known to man!
Anyway, it’s a good representation of the many mining areas that were dotted all over the country. And the hard life they lived just to earn money to feed their families and put a roof over their head.
Apparently it’s from a miners strike of 1912 – the year before my mum and dad were born.
A very old picture of a Mining Community
On the front row of this very old picture are some boys still in short trousers. They’re dressed just as my dad always said he was, having left school on the Friday to go straight down the mine on Monday. He was 14.
Can you imagine the outcry if that happened today? There would be an explosion of outrage from every walk of life, that children could be told to go to a job that so filthy, dangerous and terribly paid. These people on the photo were typical of the times in those days.
The Lundhill colliery itself was set in what we always knew as the hilly fields. That’s what they were, very hilly. Put it this way, it was easier to go down than up. The whole area was surrounded by fields and countryside. Not where you’d expect to find a mine, or people’s images of what a colliery site should look like.
No questions asked
There was a row of houses in a long terrace, where the miners and their families lived. Indeed a lot of my dad’s relatives lived there. Of course when he was a boy, you didn’t get asked if you wanted to go down the mines. You went, with no questions asked! Again, imagine the outcry if that happened today.
It was filthy, awful work and at the end of the week, whatever small wage he earned was given straight over to his mother to buy food and pay bills.
Compared to today
When you think what children have these days. I really do think they should be told about the abject poverty that people lived with, in trades that are mostly lost today. No toys, fancy clothes, no iPads, no anything.
And for their parents, no washing machines, vacuum cleaners none of the modern things we take for granted these days. The dishwasher was someone doing them in the sink. But with water that had to be boiled first, there was no such luxury as hot running water, never mind all the ensuites and luxuries we have today.
Remember what’s gone before…
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to have moved on, because it’s not. Progress will happen, through time immemorial and so it should be. I just personally wish that people would realise and remember what’s gone before. And what they have, compared to what other generations had. And in fact what people still endure today in countries all over the world.
They didn’t have the luxury of showers at the mine back then and went home covered in the filth that they worked in. And it was filthy, believe me.
On the Row as it was fondly known, they all had a tin bath hung on the back wall of their houses. It had to be ready and full of steaming hot water, all of which had to boiled and carried to the tin bath in front of the fire.
It must have taken ages to fill them as they were deep sided and of course had to be emptied of their black water in the same way it was filled. Then hung back on the wall outside. A set of fresh clean clothes would be warming by the fire and then onto a massive hot dinner. They needed the calories they had worked off with hours of manual labour.
Day after weary day in the mining community
Of course, this was repeated day after day after weary day with no let up. It must have been so hard for them to do. I can remember my dad coming in from work, covered in soot and as black as the ace of spades. We were living in a new house with a bathroom by this time, so we didn’t have to go through the tin bath ordeal.
Not longer after that, showers were put in for all the miners along with free towels, wow what a bonus. You could always tell who worked in the mines as they all had panda eyes with a ring of dirt stuck into their eyelashes that they couldn’t get off. They also had dark purple marks under their skin where they had been injured or scratched or whatever. The coal dust went straight into the wound and left them with a tattoo. My dad had his fair share of those I can tell you.
The house on the Row
My grandparents lived in a stone detached house, just away from the terrace. Their house was at the bottom of all the hills in the hilly fields, as was the terrace.
It seemed a bit of an odd place to put them, where water would naturally run down into the dip. My dad would tell me that when it rained heavily, their cellar would flood with water. He and his two brothers and one sister made a boat to sail across the water in the cellar – enterprising or what!
Now, all that’s left of the mining community is a pile of dirty lumps of stone that were cut into the steep banking, and not much else.
There is such a lot more to tell. If you’ve enjoyed this blog there’s a part two about the lives and miners of the Lundhill mine.
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