Yorkshire Mining Veterans
Yorkshire Mining Veterans

Author: Brian Elliott

Publisher: Wharncliffe

Published: 2005-09-30

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1783378360

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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.

Yorkshire Mining Veterans
Yorkshire Mining Veterans

Author: Brian Elliott

Publisher:

Published: 2005-09-01

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9781903425589

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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.

Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors
Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors

Author: Brian Elliott

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2014-02-11

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1473834651

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“A meticulous mixture of social and family history . . . Whether or not you have mining connections, this is an interesting socio-economic read.” —Your Family Tree In the 1920s there were over a million coalminers working in over 3000 collieries across Great Britain, and the industry was one of the most important and powerful in British history. It dominated the lives of generations of individuals, their families, and communities, and its legacy is still with us today—many of us have a coalmining ancestor. Yet family historians often have problems in researching their mining forebears. Locating the relevant records, finding the sites of the pits, and understanding the work involved and its historical background can be perplexing. That is why Brian Elliott’s concise, authoritative and practical handbook will be so useful, for it guides researchers through these obstacles and opens up the broad range of sources they can go to in order to get a vivid insight into the lives and experiences of coalminers in the past. His overview of the coalmining history—and the case studies and research tips he provides—will make his book rewarding reading for anyone looking for a general introduction to this major aspect of Britain’s industrial heritage. His directory of regional and national sources and his commentary on them will make this guide an essential tool for family historians searching for an ancestor who worked in coalmining underground, on the pit top or just lived in a mining community. As featured in Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine and the Barnsley Chronicle.

Northumberland and Cumberland Mining Disasters
Northumberland and Cumberland Mining Disasters

Author: Maureen Anderson

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2009-10-01

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1845630815

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Part One includes an overview of early disasters, multiple fatalities, from 1710. Part Two, 1806-1841 concerns disasters, under the theme of 'Pit Children'.Part Three, 1844-1888, covers a variety of accidents including explosions and floodings and is called 'Fire, Air and Water'. The final section, Part Four, covers modern disasters, from 1910-1951. The day-to-day life of a miner was fraught with danger, especially when pits were in private hands. Despite government inspection and regulation accidents occurred and they devastated local families and communities. The tragedies included great acts of bravery by volunteer and official rescue teams and they attracted widespread press and media coverage. The great disasters include Hartley (204 deaths), Wallsend (102 fatalities) and Whitehaven (104). The author has taken great care to chronicle each event and compile lists of the dead, including their dependents. The book should be of great value to anyone interested in coal mining, social and family history.

Durham Mining Disasters, c. 1700–1950s
Durham Mining Disasters, c. 1700–1950s

Author: Maureen Anderson

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2008-10-16

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 178340843X

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It is now over half a century since the last coalmining disaster to affect the lives and families of people living and working on what became known as the Great Northern Coalfield. This was the first area of Britain where mining developed on a large scale but at tremendous human cost. Mining was always a dangerous occupation, especially during the nineteenth century and in the years before nationalization in 1947. Safety was often secondary to profit. It was the disasters emanating from explosions of gas that caused the greatest loss of life, decimating local communities. In tight-knit mining settlements virtually every household might be affected by injury or loss of life, leaving widows and children with little or no means of support. At Haswell in 1844 95 men and boys perished; 164 died at Seaham in 1880 and 168 at West Stanley in 1909. This volume provides us with an account of these and all the other pit disasters in County Durham from the 1700s to the 1950s

Homefront Yorkshire, 1939–1945
Homefront Yorkshire, 1939–1945

Author: Len Markham

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2007-10-18

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 178159743X

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No event in history had such a profound and long-term effect as World War Two, it's consequences still helping to shape the modern world. With our trade routes harassed by U-boats, our skies darkened by the Luftwaffe and our beaches imperilled by the threat of invasion, the period from 1939 to 1945 was a frightening one for ordinary civilians. But the people of Yorkshire responded to the challenge with incredible fortitude, camaraderie, determination and good humour, the tireless efforts of armies of civilians keeping the British lamp of freedom trimmed. This unique compendium of many never-before-published personal reminiscences from the Yorkshire home front paints an astonishing picture of life in the war torn county. It records the tender and sometimes hilarious adventures of boys and girls, the selfless grind of workers in the mines and factories, the exhausting labours in allotments and fields and the bravery and dedication of the emergency services and other dedicated professionals who just put on their tin hats and worked on. Consigned to the memory banks for nearly seven decades, these stirring remembrances reveal the wealth of ingenuity and invention and the passionate bulldog spirit that kept our hopes alive during our darkest hours, the author also touching on the less heroic aspects of the period.

Grimethorpe Revival
Grimethorpe Revival

Author: Mel Dyke

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2012-10-30

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1783469722

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This is a unique archive of childrens hopes, fears, views and memories during times when political shifts affected and risked educational potential, performance and aspiration. When career prospects for girls were equally at risk in mining dominated areas it reveals how a creative counter movement in a coalfield community during the bleak days of the 1990s pit closures was strengthened and supported by a namedropping backlash of heartening support wiping out boundaries of class or political slant. The outcome then was positively motivated youngsters, with some remarkable and diverse results right up to the present day.

Not So Merry Wakefield
Not So Merry Wakefield

Author: Kate Taylor

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1903425727

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Talks about the life and times of a Wakefield woman in the late twentieth century with substantial local historical information. This book aims to echo Henry Clarkson's memories of Merry Wakefield (1887), but with more sombre overtones reflecting experiences of single parenthood, and the trauma of a fatal car accident, but with good times too.

Like Father, Like Son
Like Father, Like Son

Author: Michael Parkinson

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Published: 2020-11-05

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1529362482

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'a quietly impressive book, which does something most celebrity autobiographies shy away from: it seeks the truth and, more often than not, finds it.' - THE MAIL A look at the life and times of the man Sir Michael most looked up to. It started in the shadow of the pithead in a South Yorkshire mining village and ended up in tears before an audience of millions. Michael Parkinson's relationship with his late father John William was, and remains, a family love story overflowing with tenderness and tall tales of sporting valour, usually involving Yorkshire cricket or Barnsley FC. However, it was the overwhelming grief which poured out of Michael when Piers Morgan pressed him about John William in a television interview - four decades after the death of the father he encapsulated as 'Yorkshireman, miner, humorist and fast bowler' - that convinced one of the outstanding broadcasters and journalists of our time to delve deeper into the dynamics of their lives together. Co-written with his son Mike, this affectionate and revealing memoir explores the influences which shaped John William, Michael and succeeding generations of Parkinsons. The journey leads them from the depths of a Yorkshire coal mine, via the chapel, pub and picture-house, to a spot behind the bowler's arm at Lord's and the sands at Scarborough. While Like Father, Like Son conveys a powerful sense of time and place, it is wit, insight and, above all, enduring love which shine through its pages.

In Plain Sight
In Plain Sight

Author: Dan Davies

Publisher: Quercus

Published: 2014-07-17

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 1782067450

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A major source for the BBC drama The Reckoning Winner of the 2015 Gordon Burn Prize and the 2015 CWA Non-Fiction Dagger Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the James Tait Black Prize Dan Davies has spent more than a decade on a quest to find the real Jimmy Savile, and interviewed him extensively over a period of seven years before his death. In the course of his quest, he spent days and nights at a time quizzing Savile at his homes in Leeds and Scarborough, lunched with him at venues ranging from humble transport cafes to the Athenaeum club in London and, most memorably, joined him for a short cruise aboard the QE2. Dan thought his quest had come to an end in October 2011 when Savile's golden coffin was lowered into a grave dug at a 45-degree angle in a Scarborough cemetery. He was wrong. In the last two and a half years, Dan has been interviewing scores of people, many of them unobtainable while Jimmy was alive. What he has discovered was that his instincts were right all along and behind the mask lay a hideous truth. Jimmy Savile was not only complex, damaged and controlling, but cynical, calculating and predatory. He revelled in his status as a Pied Piper of youth and used his power to abuse the vulnerable and underage, all the while covering his tracks by moving into the innermost circles of the establishment.