Mining Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age

My interest in the mining business stems from when I was a boy.

People don't realise that in this village

there were about nine collieries,

as well as the Darcy Lever Coal and Terracotta Company.

Most of the pit-owners

lived in this neighbourhood.

The far end was called "dolly tub city" - they took washing in

to subsidise their poor wages.

Bolton had its share of collieries.

The areas around Bolton were heavily mined up until the 1900s.

Just down here are the remains of Ladyshore colliery

where I cycled as a small boy.

Amazing site, the whole basin where the pit were,

were completely full of canal boats, all sunk.

They all had LMS Railway Company

or Ladyshore Coal Company on their prows and sterns.

My auntie, she used to say to me,

"There's a mine shaft under my house" - I half believed her.

But when she died, and the road eventually got demolished,

just where her house was, there's a chestnut fence about 60 foot square.

She must have known something.

Now these pithead remains are all that's left of the mine here.

But there are still some mines that show what it was like to be a miner.

I went over to the Yorkshire coalfield.

The National Coal Mining Museum is near Wakefield, in West Yorkshire.

Work has stopped, but the mine is as it was when it was still working.

Not long ago, England had a vast mining industry.

It's very sad to say it's practically nearly all gone.

There are still lots of places like Caphouse colliery, here,

where you can still go below ground and see how it used to be.

-Now then, David.

-All right, Fred?

Not so bad. I see you've still got a wooden headgear.

-Aye, it's one of the only ones left in Europe.

-I can imagine!

-This engine was installed in 1876.

-Yeah.

It was in regular use until 1979.

-I see you've got an aviary as well!

-Aye, one or two swallows in.

-This is the pit bank.

-This is it - where we descend.

This is a brass coin, so we know how many people are underground at once.

-If anything happens, you know where I am!

-Right.

After you, Fred, in you go.

Mind your head.

Yeah!

'This one isn't very deep but in some pits,

'the cage went down 3,000 feet.

'When you got down, the coalface might have been a mile away.'

This is where the tour starts, date-wise.

-We're talking early 1800s.

-That looks a bit grim!

It's the New Hard's coal seam. He'd pick it off the solid,

and shovel it onto that sledge.

This woman - his daughter or wife -

would drag the sledge down here.

This little lad is the door trapper. He'd open and close that door

once she'd gone through, to keep the ventilation going.

Round here are some of the drilling machines we used.

-See, there's a very early hatchet one.

-Aye.

Hydraulic and compressed air ones.

The miners' equivalent to Black & Decker - a portable electric drill.

-Weighing half a ton!

-Bit on the heavy side.

A chap would hold it on his shoulder and three would shove at the back.

That were all instead of them fancy props.

Start with a drill that long, finish with one of eight foot.

This is the business end of the job.

-Aye.

-A shearing machine, disc there.

That's designed to give us small coal for power stations.

-It's like a grindstone.

-Just grinds it up into powder.

'Despite modern equipment, it was still a dangerous place to work.

'Coal used to be cut by a hewer.'

The miner would use a small pick and lie on his side

to undercut the coal seam.

As a miner, you always had to live with danger.

In such a hazardous environment, workers had to rely on each other.

Because of this, a strong sense of comradeship developed,

probably more than in any other industry.

This affected daily life. Mining communities were very close

with strong loyalties, and a great sense of tradition.

The thing is, none of this is ancient history.

In 1947, there were nearly 750,000 miners in this country.

During the strikes of 1984, there were still over 200,000 miners.

But there's no trace left of all their pits,

and the communities they lived in have all been completely changed.

One of these communities was at Newtongrange, south of Edinburgh.

Lady Victoria colliery was closed in 1981, but all the buildings

have been preserved as the Scottish Mining Museum.

The colliery's pipe band goes on.

BAND PLAYS "Scotland The Brave"

You can't go underground here, but the surface workings are impressive.

Sad as well, when you think of the men working here, all the activity.

This is the area where the maintenance men did their stuff.

They got all the locomotives and pit ponies, that sort of thing.

This is the bell that did the signalling.

I don't think anyone will come now.

Yeah, this is the top of the shaft

which went down, I think, for...1,500 feet

into the bowels of the Earth.

All very quiet.

None of these places can give you a real feel for what it was like -

the dirt, noise and sheer violence.

A record-breaking 40 million tonnes of coal rolled off these wagons

during the mine's 90-year history.

This is a bank of eight Lancashire boilers

that once generated the steam

to drive the winding engine - and when they were first installed,

they would be fired with coal.

Later, for economy's sake, it's just coal dust which were blown in

with a fan system to keep it going.

It's rather sad and eerie, really, in here.

Once it would be the scene of unbelievable activity,

with coal shovels flying about.

Now, it's quiet and peaceful.

Somebody's nicked all the water gauges. It's so sad.

There should be a water level arrow.

You can even see where it's been repaired.

New rivets in the gusset stays inside. Not too articulately -

the guy must have been to the pub, there are dinges in it

instead of the rivet head - misfiring with his hammer.

After this, I wanted to get back to the old mining days

when the wealth was underground - and not just coal.

Tin, copper, slate and lead were extracted.

Whatever you mined, life was hard and conditions were primitive.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the North Pennines

were Britain's major lead producer.

I stopped there to find out about working conditions.

The Killhope Lead Mining Centre is near Alston.

You can see how water power drained the mines and powered the machines,

and you can see the conditions that hundreds of children worked in,

separating the ore from the waste.

-..Intensive-looking contraptions.

-This is where the kids worked.

It's good to come here today, you get a proper authentic feeling of it.

-Did they never have a roof?

-No.

-This is it, then.

-There we go.

-Then what?

-You and I have got to work.

-We're gonna wash this stuff.

-Yeah.

-Have a rake.

-What would you call that?

-A hoe.

-A coal rake, they call it.

-Oh, right.

Tell you what, this is poor stuff.

-There's not many shiny bits!

-Not a lot here.

-This is your next job over here.

-Yeah.

Oh, heck!

That's quite a poor apology for a hammer, isn't it?!

How old would they be when they did that?

You'd start here at nine, maybe ten years old.

-And you'd graduate when you were about 18.

-Yeah?

-You'd graduate to down the mine.

-Oh.

-A man's job!

-Yeah.

What does this contraption do?

This is the main weapon for separating the stuff.

A hotching tub.

-Is it?

-You've got a sieve here in the water like that.

-You put your broken bits in there.

-Yeah.

And you jiggle that up and down, with this arm.

-Do you want a go?

-Thank you, Ian!

-On this lovely day!

-Can I watch?

-The start of my apprenticeship into ushing.

-That's it!

Once you've got the water into it,

it goes harder, doesn't it? Ooh!

-Do you want a job?

-No!

I'd think I'd be better constructing an engine to do that.

This was the engine they developed.

Well, this is the automated version, is it not?

This is the upmarket, improved version.

-It's a bit drier.

-And less strenuous!

-It's just the same job the kids were doing outside.

-Yeah.

Sloshing it up and down, the heavier stuff sinks. Same idea.

Just in the time we've stood here,

you'd be tired, doing it as many times by hand

-as what that eccentric's done.

-Yeah.

By the Bolton-Bury-Manchester canal, there are interesting remains

where you can see how water was used in an 18th century coal mine.

Wet Earth colliery was in the Irwell Valley in Salford

and water was the only source of power

for driving machines and drainage.

The water used to come along here for the water wheel, did it?

-This is the feeder stream for the pit.

-Yeah.

'Alan Davies's team from the Lancashire Mining Museum

'have been rooting about for quite a few years.

'They've found lots of interesting things designed by James Brindley

'to provide the water power.

'I went out exploring with them

'and it turned out to be real industrial archaeology.'

-That's original brickwork.

-Is it?

-Original brickwork, 1749.

Is that beeping the modern equivalent of a Davy lamp?

We used to rely on lamps but now we've got these electronic monitors.

-If there's gas, does it go off like a burglar alarm?

-It does, yeah.

MONITOR BEEPS

-That's the hole is it, down there?

-Just down there.

Don't slip!

Brindley's idea was sophisticated and even involved digging a siphon

to take the water channel under the river.

-Why did he do it?

-Maybe there was a landowner who didn't want it there

-so he had to do all this.

-Like, "I don't want your railway!"

-..Very interesting.

-There's the big hole.

-James Brindley's wheel chamber.

-This is where it were?

Yeah, about 1750.

-Shall we have a look further down?

-Aye, let's look.

Any further here?

-It'll be up to your neck in there.

-Oh, heck, I'm not doing that!

Right. So!

The wheel rubbed on the wall there.

It's a diameter of about 22 foot, by 18 foot wide.

There'd have been cog wheels and gear wheels, like a Swiss clock.

These girders are something, eh? How did they get them round here?

Coal, lead, tin and copper. Whatever was being extracted,

the miner's main enemy was water.

As the quest for minerals drew miners deeper underground,

water was an impenetrable barrier.

Mines were drowned out, abandoned,

and water-powered systems couldn't cope.

The development of more efficient pumping machinery

wasn't due to coal miners but the Cornish tin miners

who had experienced the difficulty

of keeping the mines free of water much earlier.

Credit for the use of the steam engine must go to them.

The Geevor and Levant mines were on the Cornish coast

at Pendeen.

The last shift at Geevor came up in 1990.

It's now a mining heritage centre.

Johnny Johnson, a guide here, was on the last shift.

Standing there you can see what my light's shining on.

-What's his name?

-The guides have their own names for him.

'The guide takes you into some old workings and you can see

'why Thomas Newcomen was called the father of the steam engine

'and why its early development took place here for mine drainage.'

Half a mile along the cliff from Geevor

is the older Levant mine, and in its engine house

you can see the original beam engine working.

'It was restored by some volunteers from the Trevithick Society

'whose nickname is the Greasy Gang.'

When it's done, there's nowt to do, only rub it with a rag.

-I had a go at driving their engine.

-It's all yours.

-Right. Thank you.

First thing is handbrake off.

Watch the block on the flywheel.

Keep going. Right, it's off the block.

Right. Now, then...

Watch the vacuum gauge. 20...

24. Now it's self-sustaining.

'This engine dates back to 1840

'and it used to wind two skips up and down the shaft at a speed

'of 400 feet per minute.'

You learnt that quickly. You've done it before.

Keep your eye on the flywheel - pin out, throttle closed. Watch the mark.

A bit more. Bring her round. Off.

Coming up nicely.

Right off. Look at that.

-And that's it.

-Very good. Can I have my diploma?

Back at Geevor, you can see the much more modern winding machinery

and the tin processing plant that was in use until the mine was closed.

Once the ore had been separated from the waste, a lot of it was shipped to South Wales,

where there was a good supply of coal for smelting.

The Big Pit is at Blaenavon in South Wales.

Mining grew alongside the iron smelting industry.

This is Big Pit in Blaenavon.

You can see how the coal and iron industries altered the landscape of the South Wales valleys.

There was the growth in iron production that led to the increase in the demand for coal.

If you look behind me,

all them pit heaps - 100 years ago, it must've been an unbelievable sight of the mining industry.

If you look south, you see where the iron works were.

They were all there to feed the mouths of the blast furnaces on the iron works.

This place is the real thing.

It looks like it did in February 1980, when the last miners clocked off.

-Here we are. Welcome to my world.

-Aye. It's exciting stuff up here.

There's been a bit of digging and trouble and strife over there.

-There were 162 drifts.

-Drift mines, just little'uns.

And 34 of these shafts. There's been quite a bit of mining over the years.

'In its heyday, this pit employed 1,300 men

'and over 250,000 tonnes of coal a year were brought up these shafts.

'This is another pit with an underground tour.

'Because the shaft is still in use, it is inspected every 24 hours.'

We'll descend the shaft on top of the cage, which will be interesting.

Isn't that right? I feel a bit like Houdini in this lot - chains.

Goodbye.

Aye. Now, then.

-This is a magnificent elliptical shaft, isn't it?

-Yeah.

These pipes drain the water away.

-Other cage going by.

-Yeah, he's going home.

It's nice brickwork that, isn't it?

-Nobody could see it and yet...

-..they did a nice job. Modern rope.

Yeah, the wire hoses.

The water garlands all tip to this side,

so the water drains from garland to garland.

-You can see the chicken wire behind.

-They covered it up.

-Is that a piece of...

-..a piece of timber.

-Nice looking. It looks like it's been up years.

That's the signalling system for up...up top.

-We're setting off.

-We're off.

You can see as we go a bit further where the cage was rubbing at one time.

-The pressure on the sides of them.

-Loads of pressure.

-Yeah, yeah...

I enjoyed that.

At its peak before the First World War, 10% of Wales worked in the mines

and a lot more relied on the industry for their livelihood.

The Rhonda Valley alone contained 53 working collieries in an area 16 miles long.

It was the most intensely mined area in the world and densely populated.

Work was plentiful, but conditions and pay were poor.

Between the 1870s and the 1920s,

statistics show that a miner was killed every six hours and one was injured every two minutes.

If South Wales was famous for its coal,

North Wales was, and still is, famous for its slate.

I headed north to one of the great centres of the Welsh slate industry.

Here at Llechwedd slate caverns

in the heart of Snowdonia, near Blanaeu Ffestiniog,

is the last of the greatest Victorian slate mines in the world.

There used to be 16 working levels,

with 24 miles of underground tramway in its heyday.

I think there's now three left

to show the people how it were in the Victorian era, mining slate.

I've been up a few ladders,

but he's got rather a precarious job.

They refer to him as the "danger man".

He checked the ceiling for loose bits.

To see what happens to the slate

after it's been quarried, come to The Welsh Slate Museum at Llanberis

and see what they do with it all.

Well, David, eh... God were good to us when he gave us that stuff.

It's thin and yet rain doesn't come through.

'The skills of slate splitting and dressing are demonstrated here.

'It was originally done in the quarry itself.

'Some of the people who do the demonstrations in the museum

'can say their forefathers have worked the slates of Wales.

'It's not changed for 200 years and is more difficult than it looks.'

Success!

Can you come closer to the traverse?

This is more difficult than that.

They're better than mine now. That's the measuring stick, yeah?

Right...

Back at Llechwedd, you get an idea of what it was like to be a miner here.

TANNOY: "This is the true memorial to the Welsh slate miners.

"These vast chambers hewn out of the rock using gunpowder and muscle.

"This chamber and many like it stretching for 25 miles..."

That's all that's left of our mines - now part of the tourist industry.

But mining is too much a part of our recent past to be seen only as an industrial heritage.

Tough and dangerous as it was, it provided a livelihood for tens of thousands of men in Britain,

until, despite the fight to save it, the industry was destroyed.

It's a way of life that we'll never see again, not in this country.

But because it was all so recent, there are still plenty of places to see.

Subtitles by Sue Mongredien and Glen Laker, BBC - 1999