rural pits

Jessica and I drove past Thoresby Colliery on Tuesday on our way to a meeting with the Sherwood Forest Trust. I said I think that’s one of the few pits left and its closing soon.  Sadly it already had a few weeks earlier.

When the last pit near Castleford (see below) closes in December that will represent the end of a 150 years of industrial production in rural coal seams and communities of Britain. Not everyone loves the miners but as someone who grew up in the Nottinghamshire Coalfields and had a number of relatives who “worked down the pit” the end of this industry and the cultural and community legacy it left feels like the loss of something more fundamental than the loss of simply (and tragically a few hundred jobs). The article tells us:

The UK’s very last deep pit coal mine is about to close. The BBC’s former labour and industrial correspondent, Nicholas Jones, reflects on the end of an era.

Coal heated our homes, fuelled the industrial revolution, and over the centuries provided millions of jobs in coalfields across the UK, but soon deep mining will be no more, and a way of life is about to end.

“It’s absolutely heart-breaking,” says Dave Douglass, a former pit delegate and secretary who has spent his life working at the recently-closed Hatfield pit near Doncaster.

“The only way that a non-professional working class lad could earn a decent living, buy a house and get a decent car and holiday was by being a miner, and being a miner was a very proud thing to be.”

Before it shut down in July, Hatfield was one of only three remaining privatised deep pit mines in the UK.

Thoresby in Nottinghamshire also ceased production in July. Both are now being dismantled, leaving just Kellingley pit near Castleford – and that’s closing in early December.