Yorkshire Mining Veterans (ePub)
Imprint: Wharncliffe Books
Series: Mining Heritage
File Size: 38.2 MB (.epub)
Pages: 144
ISBN: 9781783378364
Published: 30th September 2005
Recommended reading
'A book that has been crucial in keeping my thoughts about my grandfather's life as a miner on the straight and narrow.' (Like Father, Like Son, Sir Michael Parkinson CBE)
Yorkshire Mining Veterans is an extraordinary collection of stories told by the Veterans of the mines. Their memories span nearly a century from the early 1900's to the great strike of 1984/85 as well as the pit closures of the 1990's. Miners all across the Yorkshire region from the Selby Coalfield to the old West Riding area in and around Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster and Sheffield share their experiences with the reader.Brian began his research prepared to explore the many roles of miners, working conditions and their way of life, but interviews uncovered more remarkable stories, especially relating to the period before nationalisation. Getting a job often meant leaving school on Friday and starting work either in terrible conditions on the pit top screens, described by a 99 year old veteran as 'Miltonic' or 'on the haulage' in the cold pit bottom. Incredibly, one man described his work as a young trammer in the 1930's, painfully pushing tubs along a low underground roadway using a candle as his source of light, 'a throw back to conditions a century or more earlier'. A sprightly 93-year-old described an occasion when. as a young lad, he worked naked alongside his father and refused to make himself to make himself 'descent' when the lady Mayor made a VIP visit.Set chronologically according to the age of the miner, the author profiles each of the 47 veterans and tells their individual stories based on his interviews with them. Their stories, all previously untold, together with a superb collection of photographs makes fascinating reading.
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About Brian Elliott
Brian Elliott is a well-known author (@BElliottAuthor on 'X') who has published many articles and books relating to local history and especially coalmining. Selected examples of the latter for Pen & Sword include Barnsley Pits and Pitmen, South Yorkshire Mining Disasters (2 Vols), Yorkshire Mining Veterans, Miners' Strike Day by Day, Coalminers (Images of the Past), Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors and Coal Mine Disaster in the Modern Era 1900-1980 (Images of the Past) and (forthcoming, April 2025) Miners and the Great War.