Harry Mead digs into a short but invaluable record of the region's mining past.
NORTHERN MINING ROOTS by Bernard McCormick (Bermac Publications, £7, from local outlets at Coxhoe, Ottakar's, Darlington, and Durham City Information Centre; or for £8.50 from the author at 16, Cheviot Place, Newton Aycliffe, DL5 7EL.)
BERNARD McCormick could never be said to take a dispassionate view of pit life. Nor would he remotely wish to do so. "As early as August 20, 1662,'' he writes, "there is seen to be a need to combine with others in a body for strength, against ruthless coal owners, when 2,000 miners signed a petition to the King, asking for redress...''
This rebellion was a preliminary skirmish in what Bernard, who spent his first five working years at Bowburn Pit in County Durham, introduces as "the early fight by the miners to establish trade unions, with men to put over their point of view to the manipulative coal owners and speculators that used scab labour from others parts of the country. Paid bullies and bailiffs turned families out of their homes...''
This fate perhaps befell at least some of those gallant 2,000 petitioners to the King, for, as Bernard relates, "the petition was never sent, and all of the men who signed it were one way or another victimised cruelly...''
Under the chapter heading The Hard & Sad Years, Bernard presents a 12-page account of the coal miners' early struggles, particularly in County Durham, as a top dressing on what is primarily a gazetteer of North-East pits - from Addison, sunk by the Stella Coal company near Ryton in 1864, to Wooley, near Roddymoor, sunk in the same year by Pease and Partners. "There was a fire on 30th January 1911, which badly damaged the washers and the coal hopper,'' Bernard informs us of the latter.
Such detail is typical of the wealth of information Bernard has collated. He outlines the sinking difficulties at several pits, summarises the region's numerous coal seams, explaining their different qualities, and for (very) good measure, he puts a human face to it all with a concluding profile of a surviving veteran miner - 80-year-old Ken Robinson, of Witton Park.
At the local Hole in the Wall pit, Ken undertook what he considered "the hardest work on earth'' - "putting" (pushing tubs) along passages so low that the putters' backs scraped against the roof. "All the putters working in this area had a line of scabs on their backs.''
It is hard to imagine there is any Durham family with a coal mining connection that will not want to possess this short yet invaluable record - well illustrated incidentally - of the county's great coal epic.
TROUBLED COLLIERIES 2 by Bernard McCormick (all details as above).
BERNARD here deals more expansively with 13 collieries - ten in Durham, the others in Northumberland, Yorkshire and Wales - that suffered major accidents. Six of his Durham examples figured in the original version of this book, to which he has added Seaham, Brancepeth, East Hetton (Kelloe) and Wingate.
COAL: A HUMAN HISTORY by Barbara Freese (Arrow, £7.99)
WE in the North-East are well aware of the human cost of coal and the region receives due attention from Barbara Freese for its part in both sparking the industrial revolution and in making coal the king of the energy world. But coal is a universal fuel which has brought global benefits and global problems and this concise history effectively traces its rise and fall around the world. And while Britain's mining industry has been decimated, Barbara Freese is quick to point out its major role in many other countries.
She does not set out to deliberately blacken coal's image (it does that well enough itself) but more to make us aware of how it has affected and still affects our whole well-being. Yesterday's fuel is still with us today but will there be a future for mankind if we do not develop a new viable and safe energy source? This is a history with one eye on the future.
Published: 24/01/2006
