Memories of Walton Pit – Woodyard Cottages

In this film my dad, Albert Knowles, is revisiting the place he was born and grew up. The area is also the place where he worked, namely, Walton Colliery. We are walking round the area and filming it as it is now, but discussing how it used to be, noting the changes that have taken place. The process is assisted with reference to photographs that were taken when the family lived there, many years ago. Some of my own experiences at this location as a child are also referred to. My grandparents (Albert and Martha Knowles), who lived, there looked after me while my parents were at work.

Some of the features of the area are pointed out such as the outdoor toilet block, that is still there and a wall where photographs were taken outside. Colliery features are also discussed including the weighbridge, coal bunker, the brickyard and brick kilns, a level-crossing, loco sheds, screening plant and the Barnsley canal.

We note how the field that was used for the horses that worked at the pit, is still used for horses today. This provides a good sense of continuity with the past and is rather appropriate.

We also take the route of my granddad’s journey to work from the Woodyard to shaft number three where he worked as a banks man. His daily ‘commute’ by foot was around five minutes.

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Some related blog posts where more detailed information about the Woodyard and Shaft Three can be found:

Woodyard Cottages, Walton – Home Of A Mining Community

Teamwork at the Mine – The Winding Arrangements at Walton Pit’s Shaft 3

Memories of the Spike at Walton Pit

The Spike referred to the coal miners housing located on the north eastern side of Walton Pit. Its official name was Ings Cottages. The area famously flooded in 1947 and, as a result, the residents acquired the nickname of Spike Islanders.

Looking at the site today it is hard to believe that a community once lived there. It looks like it has always been claimed by nature.

I recently walked round the area with my dad who grew up in Woodyard Cottages at the other side of the pit and frequently visited The Spike while he was growing up. I filmed him as he recounted some of his memories and his account follows. Hopefully this will help people who visit the area today to visualise the buildings that once stood there and the community that lived there.

Unveiling and Dedication of the Walton Colliery Memorial Wheel – Saturday 19 October 2019

First posted at Waterton’s Walton.

This film shows the unveiling and dedication of the Walton Colliery Memorial Wheel. It was a rather wet day, but the event was well attended – there must have been a turn out of at least 250 people.

The wheel was donated by Norman Parkinson who had been working towards the installation of a winding wheel for quite some time. Other sites of mining activity in the area had wheels to represent their mining past, and Walton, to the disappointment of many who worked at the pit, did not have one. This omission has now been put right thanks to organisations such as Working for Walton, and the Friends of Walton Colliery Nature Reserve as well as other individuals, groups and organisations from the local area.

Many of the winding wheel monuments in the area are in the form of large half circles. The Walton wheel is quite different and smaller. This sort of wheel was called ‘emergency winding pully wheels’. I personally think that this more subtle and understated wheel is better suited to Walton.

A pit’s winding gear was used to transport men and equipment to and from the pit face and to take the mined coal as well as waste materials to the surface. Such wheels were therefore central components of the mining operations and therefore have great symbolic significance for mining, miners and mining communities.

The event was introduced by the Chair of Working for Walton – Mark Blount. Trevor Chalkley of the National Mining Museum then gave an interesting and informative account of the history of mining on the site. This was followed by the dedication and blessing of the monument by The Revd Rupert Martin. The formal unveiling was carried out by former Walton Colliery miner Terry Lloyd. Closing remarks were then given by Mayor of Wakefield Charles Keith. There was also music from Crofton Silver Band.

It is rather fitting that that the Walton Pit site is now a nature reserve as the world’s first nature reserve was set up in Walton by naturalist and explorer Charles Waterton who lived at nearby Walton Hall. I tend to think of Walton as the village where nature and industry first converged when Charles Waterton did some of the earliest work on environmentalism and deep ecology during the Industrial Revolution. This work is now highly topical and of great contemporary relevance.

A Walk Round Walton Colliery Nature Park

First posted on Waterton’s Walton.

 

This is a short film about Walton Colliery Nature Park. The park was created to redevelop the site after the colliery closed in 1979. It is hard to believe that a coal mine once existed on the site as the transformation has been amazing. The only real remaining indication of industrial activity is the section of the Barnsley Canal that runs through part of the site.

Spring is a great time for a walk around the site as the wildlife tend their young. In this video you see geese and goslings, ducklings, and a nesting swan. A shrew also makes a brief appearance.

Walton Colliery Disaster Memorial Event Held on 26 April 2019

Originally posted at Heritage of Walton (HOW Project)

Words from the Mayor of Wakefield

I Was Family

For Walton – The Devil’s Breath

Ali Bullivent Sings “Butterflies”

Ghost Story

The following video shows Norman Parkinson’s closing remarks at the end of the successful Walton Colliery Disaster Memorial event. He talks about the plan for historical circular walks. The first of these on the pit site would ensure that the mining heritage and the people that mined the coal will not be forgotten.

Teamwork at the Mine – The Winding Arrangements at Walton Pit’s Shaft 3

First posted at Waterton’s Walton.

The gateway to the mine was the winding house and all the miners passed through a building like this on their way to their jobs at the coal face. This building was where the process of getting coal to the surface was coordinated and managed. Without the winding house and the crew that ran it, there would effectively be no mine and no coal to sell.

The photograph below shows the location of Walton pit’s three mine shafts, marked 1, 2 and 3. Each shaft had a winding house (marked ‘WH’) and winding equipment – the towers housing the wheels that can be seen clearly below under the shaft numbers. An engine, called the winder, was in the winding house and powered the movement of the ropes that ran around the wheels to facilitate the vertical motion of the cage to give access to the pit bottom and the coal face. Another part of the colliery of relevance to our story was the screening plant marked SP, but we will return to this later.

A team of three key men worked in this part of the pit and their roles were Onsetter, Winder and Banksman. The above ground part of the team for Walton Pit Shaft 3 can be seen in the photograph, at the top of this article, with the cage in the background. The man on the left is Albert Knowles who was the banksman and the man on the right is Gwyn Sadler who was the winder.

The winder was the man who operated the winding equipment after receiving signals from the banksman. The onsetter was the man in the pit bottom who was responsible for putting the coal safely into the cage. The coal was put into large tubs and placed in the cage at the pit bottom.  When the coal was safely stowed in the cage the onsetter would send a signal to the banksman to indicate that it was ready to bring to the surface. The banksman would then send a signal to the winder to raise the cage.

On arrival, the banksman would open the cage and guide the tubs on the two rails visible on the photograph at the top. The level of the cage in the photograph is too high for moving the tubs. The floor of the cage would need to be level with the surface so that the tubs could be pushed onto the rails from similar rails that were located in the cage itself.

The rails ran to a point where the coal was tipped from the tubs and transported by conveyor belt to the screening plant, the place in the colliery where the coal was sorted and graded by size. They then looped back in a circular path to the rear of the cage where they were returned to the cage so that they could be taken down to the pit bottom and filled again.

In addition to his role in transporting coal from the mine, the banksman was also responsible for transporting the men to and from the mine. It was to him that miners would give their metal tokens to be kept by him until they returned to the surface. This was a safety measure to ensure that all men who had entered the mine were accounted for. They did not always return from their day’s work. Banksman Albert’s own father, George had been crushed in a roof fall at the pit and died from his injuries. Albert was therefore acutely aware of the perils of the mine and what the tokens represented.

When the men returned to the surface, the banksman would lift the gate that allowed the miners to leave the mine and return to their families.

Postscript:

In addition to the three men already mentioned there were also Shaftmen who were responsible for maintaining the shafts. Some of the men involved in that role can be seen in the photograph below.

Above photo: From left to right: Fred Ashby (winder, shaft 2), Albert Knowles (Banksman, shaft 3), Doug Bradley (shaftman), Joe Richardson (shaftman) and Ernest Wilkinson (shaftman).

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Walton The Village Where Nature and Industry Met

 

The Dangers of the Mine

Originally posted at: Watertonswalton

The following account was written by my Great Auntie, Elsie Hebden in 1986. In it she reflects of her life in Walton and Crofton. I was lucky to go to her house with my grandma when I was a kid. The photo above might seem unrelated to this story but that is her above on the right dressed as a man, next to her brother, my grandad – Albert Knowles, dressed as a woman. I don’t know the story behind the picture, it must have been a fancy dress party or something; they never dressed like that when I knew them! It does demonstrate the wonderful sense of fun that those growing up and living in our local mining communities often demonstrated. They lived tough and often difficult lives, but that did not mean they had to take themselves seriously.

While the family lived in Ings Cottages (“The Spike”) near Walton Pit, tragedy struck when their father died in a mining accident. Indeed, my grandad recalls seeing a body being brought from the mine but had at the time did not know that it was his own dad.

The following account is quite moving in parts, though that might be due to my personal family connection. It brings me back in a kind of spiritual contact with people that I once knew and loved. It also gives us all an insight into how people viewed their local area, how they lived their lives and the how they responded to the challenges that fate threw their way.

I will now leave Elsie to give you an insight into the world of her own past.

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I was one of a family of seven, and lived in a mining village. The houses we lived in were quite close to the colliery. I should sway there would be about sixty-four houses.

We hadn’t much of this world’s goods, but we were healthy and happy, there were good times and bad, and even as children we knew well the dangers of that mine. We knew all about the accidents that happened almost daily, fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins and friends were brought up from underground minus limbs, blinded or even killed outright by heavy falls of rock or coal, or gas explosions. You will of course have heard how they took down a canary in a cage to test for gas after an explosion. If the canary wilted or died, then the place was unfit for men to work there for a while. They have only recently stopped making that test, it had been going on for a lot of years.

In all cases of death through the Mine, there would be a collection from house to house, but the money collected would not go on flowers, it would be given to the widows or orphans as the case may be. Everyone helped each other in that little community in sad times or glad times. One thing we had plenty of, and that was coal. It was free in those days, and still is I think to anyone who works at the Mine.

If anyone was ill in bed, a fire would be lit in the bedroom. There were three bedrooms in our house, and all contained a small fire grate. I can well remember as a child getting undress in front of a lovely coal fire in the cold weather, as that was in those days the only form of heating. No-one thought of the extra work or dirt that the fires caused, electric kettles, fires or blankets were unknown to us.

The living room fire was only let out once a week and that was for cleaning, as it was the only means of boiling water. It had to be banked up at night and kept lit all through the working week. The man of the house had to be up at 4.30a.m., stir the fire into a blaze, then put the iron kettle which had been on the hob all night onto the fire to enable him to make a pot of tea. I would have his breakfast, then fill a glass bottle with tea from the pot to take down the mine with him, which helped to sleck the dust in their throats. The sandwiches had to consist of jam or dripping, as it was too warm for meat to be taken down the mine.

They were down the mine for as many as ten or twelve hours a day; you see, some had a long way to walk underground to reach the coal face where they worked, some as much as three miles. They only had a small pit lamp for light, so you can understand what the strong sunlight did to their eyes as they left those dark conditions.

A miner’s life was not easy in my childhood days. It is all mechanised now of course, but then the coal had to be got by pick and shovel, put into the pit tubs, then pulled away to the cage by pit ponies. These ponies only saw the light of day on Bank holidays, and my word it was lovely to see them galloping around and kicking up the grass, they were truly happy, so were we with all our titbits we had saved for them.

Now, when I was twelve, my father was killed at work, the roof caved in. The men my father was working with had time to get clear. The rescue party quickly came, but my father was dead by the time they got to him. Now my mother who was 39 years old was allowed a widow’s pension of 10/- per week, a little from the colliery to help with the pension until we reached the age of fourteen and able to work, so to keep us tidy and well fed, she did sewing or papering for other people. She was a good living woman, and she saw that we all went to Sunday school in the next village. Our Sunday clothes were brushed and put away every Monday until the following Sunday. I am proud of my mother, it must have been a hard time for her. When I was fifteen, we left those houses and came to live in the village I have just left.

I helped mum until the age of seventeen, when I was sent into domestic service. I went to live in a doctor’s house in Wakefield about four miles away. The doctor and his family were not church people, so didn’t care where I went in my spare time. I tried several churches and chapels, but didn’t seem happy at any but my own. I was only allowed home every alternate Sunday, so one Sunday evening (Summer time of course), I made up my mind to find out what the town had to offer one, so I powdered and rouged my face with materials previously bought from the newly opened Woolworths store (remember nothing in these stores was over sixpence), something my mother would not have allowed, but I was thrown on my own resources and could so easily have gone on the downward path, but God thought otherwise or so it seems, because as I walked along hoping to find something better than church, I heard a band playing. Thinking it was in the park close by, I went that way but lost the sound, so turned around and went the opposite way and came upon a crowd of people. I pushed my way to the front, I have never seen or heard Salvationists before, or heard public speaking, but I did enjoy the songs, choruses and prayers, I even marched down to the Citadel with them.

The hall became my place of worship for the next four years, along with my own church in between, but I do say here and now that God led me that Sunday as I could easily have gone the opposite way. I thank Him and pray that the desire to serve him will remain with me all my earthly life.

In 1935 I married a young man I had known most of my life, then in four years’ time came the war. My husband joined the R. A. F. in 1940 and stayed in for the next five years. In my village at that time of 1940 if you had room you were expected to take in evacuee’s. I had a house with three bedrooms and just me at home. As they had just brought about 100 or so people from London to our village to be housed, a lady with two babies was brought to me, she came from Plaistow and was very sad a having to leave her home in London, but it was God who sent her to me, having these children and their mother, as I had just taken a job as post-lady, so we got on well together, her with her babies and me having someone to come home to at the end of my day’s work (we still write to each other).

Now, to my job as post-lady I had to use a bicycle which I already possessed. I had to be at the post office at 6a.m., there were three of us sorting letters until 7.15a.m., then each of us off on our different routes. My job was less letters to distribute, but father to go. I loved the open air part of it. I had to face all weathers of course, my letters were for the outlying farms, colliery houses and lonely railway house, also amongst my letters was the daily paper which had to be posted as they didn’t have paper deliveries out there, so it meant going to most of the farms every day. I had quite a number of farms, sometimes as many as six fields between each, so it meant getting off my big, opening gates, even lifting my cycle over styles, and more over than not, cows would come to meet me, I was scared of them at first, but you got to know they wouldn’t harm you.

But one day there was such a lot all bunched together, I hid behind some dry walling, my bike, my letters and me. A gamekeeper came to my rescue as he had seen me then lost me, he thought I had fallen off my cycle. I mastered that fear and had many a pound of mushrooms from those fields. I was also given lots of farm produce which was very acceptable in those days of rationing. One farmer’s wife made me promise to call every day, letters or no letters, she could see me coming from the top farm down to hers, and she would have a pot of tea and poached eff on the toast all ready for me, and wasn’t I grateful as I was really hungry after all that fresh air.

All the dogs were very good, but did a lot of barking, but that was their job, once they got to know you their tails were wagging to greet you. I have almost been thrown into the duck pond trying to ride past duck and hens, and I have been chased by the geese, they were nasty sometimes.

On very heavy snowy days I was excused delivery at the farms as it was impossible to tell the roads from the fields. That only happened twice in my times as post-lady. I didn’t have to got the same way back as my round took me through a private estate known as Nostel Priory, something like your Addington Palace. The people who owned Nostel Priory had gone abroad for the duration of the war, and it housed about 100 soldiers, but their letters were all in a sealed bag, unsealed later by an Officer. This estate had a lake, a home farm, a riding school and a park for landing a private plane.

I usually reached the post office around 12 noon, then home for a meal, then back at 3p.m until 4.30p.m., I did enjoy the work. It was a happy job just to see people’s faces when they saw you making for their door (not many letter boxes in those days). I took glad and sad news of course, but they would confide in you, the next day you would have to listen to either good or bad. Of course I occasionally received an air mail letter from my husband who was abroad, I’d keep it unopened until I found a quiet lane or field to read it quietly to myself.

Then the years between then and now I’ve learned with the help of God to live a reasonable good life. I’ve left many friends in the two villages I’ve lived in most of my life. I’ve very two dear friends who have had to give up an active life through illness, quite sorry really, but they are fighting the good fight, their tremendous faith is upholding them and to visit them is a joy. You leave with the feeling that you must never grumble again.

I forgot to mention at the beginning of my story that amongst us seven that was left fatherless through the mine was a little baby sister just five weeks old. I am now living here in the South, something I never dreamed of, but we don’t know the plan God has for us; They way I look at it is this:-

Just where he needs me

My Lord has placed me

And where he has placed me

There would I be

And Since He has found me

By love He’s bound me

To serve him joyfully

By Mrs. Elsie Hebden 1986

Woodyard Cottages, Walton – Home Of A Mining Community

In this short article I aim to capture at least some of the essence of what it meant to live at Woodyard Cottages in the days of the old Walton colliery. I do this through the eyes of members of my own family and the photographs they took of themselves and their surroundings.

Woodyard Cottages were built for the miners and their families and were immediately adjacent to the colliery site. While there was more housing for mining families in the form of the Ings Cottages, known locally as “The Spike”, at the other side of the pit, I am going to concentrate on the Woodyard, because that is where my ancestors lived. The housing of working people was close to the work back in those days. Physically demanding work and long shifts meant that there was no time to waste on commuting.

Today the Woodyard Cottages are located next to the serene and peaceful nature reserve in a highly desired location. The photograph below is from the present day, taken from the road that was used as the thoroughfare for coal trucks.

This now secluded and peaceful spot was once the centre of a great deal of hustle, bustle and industry. These were the homes of miners who worked hard for modest wages. They lived and loved and brought up their families in this place they called home.

There used to be speed bumps in the road painted in broad black and white stripes to slow down the Hansons coal haulage lorries that hurtled down the hill to the colliery. I used to watch the lorries with my grandad, Albert Knowles, from the wall on the opposite side of the road, as they came down the road empty and went back up fully laden with dust sheets covering the top of the load to prevent coal dust getting into the air.

The wall opposite the Cottages was also a popular site for the taking of group photographs like the one pictured below.

The lorries would continue down the road and cross the canal that ran through Walton and then on through the pit site. This route comes as no surprise as coal was one of the main canal cargoes. The photograph below shows the road bridge over the canal on the left of the view. Woodyard Cottages are just behind the photographer. The building at the right hand side of the photo is the beginning of the brickyard. The structure above Albert Knowles’ right shoulder are the bunkers (more on that shortly).

There is an alley at the front of the cottages. A wall and railing and the alley are all that separate the homes of the miners from the road and the coal laden wagons that went up and down it day after day. The alley is where George Knowles is having a go on his young nephew’s tricycle in the photo below and appearing to have be having a really good time. In the pit, George’s role was to look after the hard working horses in the stables in the pit bottoms.

The wall is still there today, but the railing is gone. However, there are traces of the railing embeded into the surface of the masonry.

There was another alleyway to the rear of the cottages. This ran between the cottages and the gardens of each house. The alleyway can be seen in the photos below that also show me at a young age with blonde hair, decked out in the latest 1970s fashions. The gardens can be seen on the left hand side of each photo below. On the horizon you can see the banking of the railway line that runs past Greenside, Oakenshaw Lane and Walton Common. The other railway line that runs to London runs beyond the bottom of the gardens and goes under the line mentioned above.

In the photo below my dad and auntie, in younger years, are having their photograph taken just as the local rooster is sneaking up behind them. The building behind the rooster is the detached cottage that is still there, further up the hill. To the right of that can be seen a bungalow that has since been pulled down. Between each of these buildings a stable once stood but has since disappeared.

My grandad had a pigeon loft in his stretch of garden. He is pictured below with prize pigeon that he called ‘Little Hen’. It won a number of races for him. There is an amusing story about this bird after he sold it to a bloke in Outwood. In true homing pigeon style it kept returning to its Woodyard loft even after the sale meaning that its new owner had to keep coming back to retrieve it. What do you expect when you buy a homing pigeon!

The photograph below is another view of the rear alleyway. However, this time there are a few other features visible in the background. On the middle left at the side of the alley you can see the back of the bus shelter. Next to that is the building that managed the weighbridge that was immediately in front of it. This was used to measure the coal loads coming out of the pit in the lorries. On the far right of the photo you can again see the start of the brickyard mentioned earlier. To the right of the black vehicle at the top of the road in the centre left are the bunkers. These were used for the direct sale of coal to coal merchants. As part of this structure there were four coal shoots to feed into bags for coal wagons. Coal was brought here via a rail line from the pit.

The back of the bus shelter is seen closer up in the next photos. In the first photo (in colour) the ice cream man had just been and a miner awaits his ice cream from his wife at the top of the hill.

The back of Woodyard cottages are faced with stone in contrast to the ordinary brick in the front. The following photo shows the family standing on the step at this side of the house with the stone visible behind them.

The following photos show the inside of number five Woodyard Cottages in the 1960s. In the background of the first photo you can see a cooking range that was fuelled by an open coal fire. Before the appearance of bathrooms this would also be where baths were taken in a tin tub.

In the following photo, my grandma, Martha Knowles, stands in front of the brickyard, kilns and chimney. Again, the bunkers are visible at the left hand edge of the photo.

The final photograph, below, shows the view of the pit complex from the wall that separated the alley in front of the cottages from the road. The cooling towers, the chimney, three winding machines, and the screening plant are all visible in this photo. The two ponies in the field were called Royal and Boxer (which had a white blaze on its forehead). These horses did not go down the pit but pulled loads on the surface. The banking at the far end of the field is that of the canal mentioned previously.