Earning a Living from Coal



The men of my Chicken direct line have all been coal miners, as far back as Thomas who in 1808 at the baptism of his first child, born at Hebburn Colliery, was recorded as being an Engineman. His son John, my GGGrandfather moved to Haswell and then to Murton when the new seam opened there. His son, grandsons and several
great-grandsons carried on the tradition, some working at Murton until it closed for the last time at the end of 1991.  This image is the pit as I remember seeing it, taken from a Facebook page dedicated to Murton Colliery.  Unfortunately the page doesn't seem to be monitored any longer and I've been unable to contact them so if you're reading this and you're associated with that page please do let me know.

Working in the pit in those early days was far from easy. Boys started at around the age of 10, often pulling the carts of coal that the older miners (hewers) had wrenched from the rock face deep underground with nothing more than a pickaxe and hammer. One of the most dangerous jobs I came across was my GG-uncle Thomas who at the age of 13 was a fireman in the pit. This involved him walking into the tunnels at the start of a shift, wrapped in wet rags, holding in front of him a pole with a candle on the end which would ignite any firedamp (methane) pockets, thereby rendering the workings safe for the miners to follow! I can't imagine what the financial pressures that drove a family to allow, or even encourage, their child to take on that job. Fortunately he survived to become a colliery engiineman then an inspector of ropes, being again responsible for the safety of others as he checked the ropes that raised and lowered the pit cage full of men.  He married and brought up his own children in better conditions than he'd experienced as a young man with one of them becoming a teacher and presumably never seeing the inside of a coal mine.

Now the North East coal mines are gone, the family are spread across numerous different occupations in different areas of the country but the mining heritage is still part of our lives and respect for the courage and hard work of those ancestors doesn't dwindle.


#52Ancestors52Weeks. #Murton. #Mining


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