Pits.

[Shadow]

Talking on the other thread reminded me about all the mines we used to have round our area.

As a child I could see the old Kibblesworth mine from my bedroom window and I watched the train supplying the pits.

I particularly remember as a child playing round the Allerdene pit workings after it shut down-there was an area where the shaft was that scared us kids witless-imagining plumetting down there.And stables for the ponies.Used to really affect me after seeing the film "Escape From The Dark" about pit ponies.

Ive seen a couple of monuments-pit wheels in Kibblesworth and Quaking Houses that remind me of watching those wheels really turning and knowing the miners were on their way to work.

[Jazz]

Aye, Shads, the pits were all over the place, its amazing to think how the traces of them seem to have all but disappeared. As a kid my nearest pit was the Rising Sun in Wallsend. Now they have transformed the site, slag heap and all into a country park which I periodically visit on my walks. When younger we used to get newts(including Great Crested Newts, rare now), frogs, etc from the water filled shaft (or whatever it was). Now it is all fenced off....you can look but not touch......a pity but I suppose understandable with health & safety, conservation, etc.....!
Theres a great little cafe/information centre which used to be an old Isolation Hospital....for patients with infectious diseases.
Worth a visit on a nice day.

[Shadow]

Jazz-the Allerdene sites now totally grassed over.They cant build there owing to the shafts but I walk the dogs there and I often think about where things used to be.For a long time it was a waste ground-now its all grass trees and five thousand rabbits

[Deleted]

There weren't any pits where I lived, but Lancashire did have them. They were located mainly in the Wigan/St Helens district.
It was cotton mills around me, but pits and cotton mills had two things in common - They were both hell whole and they are both extinct. Maybe a good thing.

[Jazz]

Agree there, Milky, they produced good stories and good and bad memories but having to work in them must have been horrendous....I could never have done it. I take my hat off to anyone who did grind away at it year after year to earn a crust. One of the things that these hard industries did seem to produce was a certain society......a real "Big Society" where everyone helped each other and laughed and cried together.
Shadow, yes, they've done a lot of these sites really well, I've visited quite a few and its nice to see nature taking back control. The old wagonways are great too....my brother reckons you can cycle or walk from Tynemouth to around Hexham just using tracks and without touching a public road.

[patsie]

Just had a very interesting afternoon. All started on google, cause I couldn't remember how to spell colliery. Google is great - and one thing led to another.

Anyway, still on the subject of pits. My father-in-law worked at Heworth Colliery and was badly injured when machinery crushed his arm and hand. He never worked again.

Remember when as "school leavers" we were taken around places, so we could look for jobs. My husband was one that was taken down a pit. He still remembers going into that cage to go underground - and to this day cannot understand how his dad done that, day after day!

It must have been like working in hell!

[Shadow]

I totally agree.I can barely bring myself to go into a cave let alone imagine what it must have been like to work so far underground.

[Jazz]

Feb 25, 2011 21:33:13 GMT 1 patsie said:

Just had a very interesting afternoon. All started on google, cause I couldn't remember how to spell colliery. Google is great - and one thing led to another.

Anyway, still on the subject of pits. My father-in-law worked at Heworth Colliery and was badly injured when machinery crushed his arm and hand. He never worked again.

Remember when as "school leavers" we were taken around places, so we could look for jobs. My husband was one that was taken down a pit. He still remembers going into that cage to go underground - and to this day cannot understand how his dad done that, day after day!

It must have been like working in hell!

Just before leaving school (a secondary modern) we were taken on three outings to give us a taste of "working environments" I suppose. The first was to Howdon Gasworks (which Patsie will remember), the second to Stella Power Station in Blaydon and the last to Consett Iron and Steel Works. It was automatically assumed that all of us would work in these sort of industries....shipbuilding/repairing was, of course, top of the list living near the Tyne. Most of the lads did end up doing this sort of work and many did very well, others, as in all of life, not so well. My two best friends from school, still friends now, were very successful, one becoming a university lecturer and the other ending up a millionaire having done all sorts and at present a hedge fund manager among other things.
I often think to myself that those visits were to us, like a trip abroad is for youngsters now.....a visit to Paris, Rome, Oslo etc......Howdon Gasworks etc doesn't bear comparison!

[Deleted]

Wow.....late on this one , but it raised some memories for me. I left school to work for the NCB in the Ashington area office. Trained as an accountant I ended up working at lots of different pits in the area, helping out the Managers Clerks........Ashington,Lynemouth, Ellington,Woodhorn, Rising Sun and the Whittle and finally Shilbottle.
For my last 3 years at Shilbottle, I had to go down every Friday and measure each faces volume of coal (paid piecework)....2'4" high 10yds wide and 150 yds long.
I was 24 then, couldnt do it now. Finally left in 1973 to work for Costain on the Central Motorway East Newcastle(above the Quayside) and been in construction ever since.

[skintagain]

a lot of my ancestors were engineers but my father and grandfather both worked in the pits, my father trained the pit ponies but then left the pits for the building trade, my grandfather had a glass eye he said he lost his eye in the first world war he said he was a bugler in the royal horse artillery but my mother reckons he lost it down the pit, however ive been checking records of pit disasters and accidents and have failed to come across my grandfathers name for a pit accident so who knows perhaps it was during the war, he did have an old bugle in the display cabinet.