The Pitmen's Requiem

The Pitmen's Requiem

Author: Peter Crookston

Publisher: McNidder and Grace Limited

Published: 2014-01-05

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0857160699

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Peter Crookston's book offers a beautifully written journalist's account of a Durham mining village and the Great Northern Coalfield woven around the life of Robert Saint, the composer of Gresford, a brass band composition commemorating an earlier mining disaster in which 256 workers died. Crookston brings his formidable observational qualities and writing skills as a journalist to produce a gripping narrative with utterly compelling characters and a heart-rending culmination in the demise of the mining industry under assault by Thatcher. The story is told in a gentle, unpretentious way, frequently giving voice to the characters themselves, many of whom the author knew personally or got to know in preparing the book. Apart from capturing a critical moment in a disappearing world, the book offers a vantage point from which to reflect on our own culture, and what we have lost in post-industrial Britain: the loss of community which did so much to sustain and nurture those miners in their desperate plights. This is as much a history of culture and place as much as it is biography, a book that is at once an elegy and a tribute


Coal in Victorian Britain, Part II, Volume 6

Coal in Victorian Britain, Part II, Volume 6

Author: John Benson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-10-28

Total Pages: 622

ISBN-13: 1040249302

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Coal is a topic that has been, remains, and will continue to be of significant interest to those concerned with the causes, course and consequences of industrialization and de-industrialization. This six-volume, reset collection provides scholars with a wide variety of sources relating to the Victorian coal industry.


Brass Bands of the British Isles 1800-2018 - a historical directory

Brass Bands of the British Isles 1800-2018 - a historical directory

Author: Gavin Holman

Publisher: Gavin Holman

Published:

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13:

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Of the many brass bands that have flourished in Britain and Ireland over the last 200 years very few have documented records covering their history. This directory is an attempt to collect together information about such bands and make it available to all. Over 19,600 bands are recorded here, with some 10,600 additional cross references for alternative or previous names. This volume supersedes the earlier “British Brass Bands – a Historical Directory” (2016) and includes some 1,400 bands from the island of Ireland. A separate work is in preparation covering brass bands beyond the British Isles. A separate appendix lists the brass bands in each county


The Brass Band Bibliography

The Brass Band Bibliography

Author: Gavin Holman

Publisher: Gavin Holman

Published: 2019-08-05

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13:

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9th edition, 2019. A comprehensive list of books, articles, theses and other material covering the brass band movement, its history, instruments and musicology; together with other related topics (originally issued in book form in January 2009)


Coal Mine Disasters in the Modern Era c. 1900–1980

Coal Mine Disasters in the Modern Era c. 1900–1980

Author: Brian Elliott

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2017-02-28

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1473858860

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“These haunting images, with well-researched facts, figures and timelines providing context, bring the bygone era of 20th-century coal mining to life.”—Family Tree Although everyday fatalities in mines was far greater, it was the disasters that encouraged those in power to reform the way in which miners had to work underground, especially with regard to safety. And it would be no exaggeration to say that it was the disasters that greatly contributed to bringing the coal industry into national control. Sadly, for bereaved individuals and families, nothing could really compensate for the loss of one or more of a loved one. The impact of the big disasters, where hundreds of men and boys—one or two generations—were lost, immediately, the impact was massive, and continued to be felt many years afterwards. New and restored disaster memorials bear testimony to the great respect that former mining communities continue to have for their “lost miners.” Using many previously unpublished images, and a carefully supportive text, the author provides a detailed overview of mining disasters in the modern era, from the early 1900s to the 1980s. It is the first book of its kind to attempt such a large project in pictorial form with a foreword by Ceri Thompson, curator of the Big Pit, the Welsh national mining museum. The book is published at a particularly poignant time, after the recent closure of Britain’s last deep coal mine. “So many remarkable photographs and drawings: The story may be tragic, but it is one that lies at the very heart of the history of coal mining in Britain.”—WDYTYA? magazine


The English Village

The English Village

Author: Martin Wainwright

Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books

Published: 2011-10-31

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1843177943

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A fascinating compendium of interesting details, facts, customs and lore, this is an unabashed toast to the English village, as well as a record of a disappearing world.


The Shadow of the Mine

The Shadow of the Mine

Author: Ray Hudson

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2021-06-29

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 1839761563

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The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday, the heroics and betrayals of the Miners' Strike, and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. Coal was central to the British economy, powering its factories and railways. It carried political weight, too. In the eighties the miners risked everything in a year-long strike against Thatcher's shutdowns. Their defeat doomed a way of life. The lingering sense of abandonment in former mining communities would be difficult to overstate. Yet recent electoral politics has revolved around the coalfield constituencies in Labour's Red Wall. Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson draw on decades of research to chronicle these momentous changes through the words of the people who lived through them. This edition includes a new postscript on why Thatcher's war on the miners wasn't good for green politics. 'Excellent' NEW STATESMAN 'Brilliant' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'Enlightening' GUARDIAN


Northern Gospel, Northern Church

Northern Gospel, Northern Church

Author: Gavin Wakefield

Publisher: Sacristy Press

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1910519197

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This book brings together prominent practitioners and academics to answer these questions and explore what it means to proclaim the gospel in the North of England from many angles.


Digging Up The Pitmen

Digging Up The Pitmen

Author: John Swain

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 132680474X

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This is a family saga, over five generations, set against the social history of the South Yorkshire pit communities in the twentieth century: disasters, strikes and galas. It is the story of the North family: their relationships, births, deaths, family break-ups and get-togethers. Nigel North, at fifty-five, leads a secluded life in Newcastle after his wife's death. He has every expectation that it will stay that way until, in 1992, he receives a copy of the Last Will and Testament of his Uncle Albert, a South Yorkshire pitman who he has never met. He has been left a large sum of money. His ten cousins, of whom he has never heard, have each been left a much smaller sum. Nigel cannot conceive how his uncle knows of his existence, why he should bequeath him so much money and why his father severed himself from his family. The answers lie back in the pitmen's strike and, then, the inter-war years.