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Miner's Accounts of Life Dahn t' pit
Miners Case Study - Bernard Kenney
Miners Case Study - Trevor Eager
History of The Pit
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Miners Case Study - Bernard Kenney
Location: Bradford
“…I spent forty years in the mining industry from the early Fifties to the early Eighties, it was with the closure of Shaw Cross Colliery in 1968 that myself and approximately 35 other miners were transferred to Gomersal.
We began work in mid August with a lot of us on the day shift because they were short of colliers. We were given a shovel, pick and seven pound hammer, and some even Wellington boots and waterproofs because a lot of the mine had very wet conditions. It is hard to grasp for people who do not know life in the mines, but we had come from a colliery that was fully automated, back to the dark ages of pick and shovel.
Needless to say this did not go down very well with a lot of the men, especially a lot of the younger ones, in their early twenties.
It is difficult to explain to someone who does not understand, but on a hand filling coal face the distance between each miner, if working right-handed, was about sixteen yards.
Well after we have done a week, another young lad started from Cross, and he was given a stint of coal next to me. I told him to put my shovel etc. on the belt and also his, behind me, when I rode down the coal face and I would take both sets off the belt, then he could follow them. He duly did this. When he got off the belt, he said, ‘You have a lot of coal face here, Bernard.’ I said, ‘Just keep going. You can fill it all off in about five and a half hours.’ He just said, ‘Not for me.’, jumped back on the belt and went back to the surface and finished, asked for his cards. At the time I thought nothing of it, him being young, never filled coal before, he was not going to do it. It was only that I realised that the man top-side of me was working left handed so the distance between me and him was 32 yards instead of 16 and the young lad thought he had to fill the same.
I made some good friends at Gomersal although were a little bit sceptic of us at first because we had come from a bigger pit, and their attitude was you will not close our pit down, but that was only a few.
When Gomersal did close in 1973, I transferred to Lofthouse, and to put them in comparison, it was like moving from a mud hut to a five star hotel.”
Bernard Kenney, Miner
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