Thoresby Colliery-The Big Hitters! 

Quite! Luckily for me as a child I was taken round many collieries. My Dad worked in Kent and he had an interest in the industry from his childhood in Bristol and Somerset. I am quite sure that I would have followed him underground. However on 14/6/1969 at the age of 10 I broke my right leg so catastrophically jumping out of a tree that it had to be amputated. I recall being told very gently by Tom Ellis the manager of Bersham Colliery why I couldn't be a miner. However I have been very lucky and have been able to visit many pits both in the UK and Europe. The last time I went underground was at KWK Jas-Mos in Poland during 2017.

Same here Dean!

Mandy, bless him, you and your family

Very sad. My Dad worked in Kent and often pointed out that the most dangerous feature of mining in terms of serious accidents (both on the surface and underground) was the railway systems.

@JCBAirmaster73Agreed But not everything had to close. It is absolutely mad to import coal particularly if it comes from Columbia were it is mined by children in very unsafe conditions. Also there has been much Bru Haha about the biomass burned at Drax. Well thanks to the transport issues from the southern USA means that it produces something like four times the CO2 that coal from Hatfield Main or Kellingley would. The whole situation is Nutz!

@JCBAirmaster73 Quite! The "Those In Charge" wanted to destroy everything. It's not just here in the UK. Everything has gone in most of Western and Central Europe as well the last pit in Belgium Zolder went in 1992 and the last in France Houve II in 2004 . Who would have ever believed that the German deep mined industry would not survive the second decade of the 21st century. The Czech industry is in its death throes as I type this! Quite how long CSA & Darkov near Karvin in Czech Upper Silesia can survive is anyone's guess. The Spanish industry is approaching it's end now. Elsewhere I have no idea. Bosnia and Serbia will cease deep mining once EU money is available Even in Poland and Ukraine things are closing down rapidly. As a complete aside I have been reading the 1955 'Guide to the Coalfields' this evening it is a sobering fact that very little mentioned in the book exists today. That said the UK still has very substantial coal reserves and we will need them in the future not as a fuel but as feedstock for the chemical and metallurgical industries. But you are absolutely correct the "Glory Days" of coal in Europe are long gone.

@JCBAirmaster73 Very interesting I will send you a longer reply later today. The last time I was at Thoresby was the day the winding tower at Harworth came down. In truth we were incredibly lucky as I had expected to see only rubble! But the tower still stood! (well at least until the evening! ) I didn't have a long lens but very luckily another man was taking photos with a very long lens which was compatable with my camera and he very kindly lent me his lens!

@JCBAirmaster73I could not agree more with your sentiments. I have tried as much as possible to get out and photograph things that are "commonplace" because that is what disappears. I now realise how quickly things changed and often not for the best. I was very lucky as a child because my Dad and his Father were interested in industrial history long before it became fashionable My paternal Grandfather arrived in this country in 1912 aged 20. He came from Strabane with his mother. It appears that his father went to the Klondike in 1898 and never returned. Well they arrived by sea in Whitehaven and he got a job at William Pit which was notoriously fiery and of course was the location of the most serious post WW II accident in 1947 and by far the worst mining accident under the NCB. By then Grandad was with the Customs & Excise being 'The Collector' at Newhaven (which covered Shoreham and Shoreham Airport) He launched a collection in Brighton and raised a very considerable sum of money for the relief fund. His mining career ended in 1914 when he joined up. He was quite badly injured on The Somme in 1916 so much so that he was transferred to logistical Corp and sent to Greece! By the 1920's he was a professional footballer but broke a leg in either 1924 or 1925 that was the end of that career. Well he was then offered a job in the Customs & Excise where he remained until he retired in 1956. Well in 1937 he was asked to go to Bath to help set up and run the "Shadow Factories" that were built in the various underground stone quarries around Bath (I remember well him telling me that in truth we were far better prepared in 1939 than we had been in 1914) Being based in Bath meant that Dad could cycle to Radstock to look at the various steam engines in the local pits. He told me that the most interesting pit however was Frog Lane at Coalpit Heath north of Bristol which had opened in 1853 and still had most of its original features and equipment when in was closed by the NCB in 1949-50! By all accounts the staff here were very friendly towards a small boy who was interested in engineering. One very curious feature was whilst Frog Lane was by 1940 a veritable "working museum" it's surface railway was shunted by a "modern" Ruston diesel locomotive! Dad told me that it was the first diesel locomotive that he had ever seen! Well by 1944 the family was back in the Brighton area and Dad did his engineering apprenticeship at Brighton Locomotive Works between 1946 and 1951. It is often overlooked today that right up to the late 1960's Brighton was a significant manafacturing centre. In fact it was effectively two towns. The seaside resort town with its piers and "kiss Me Quick" hats etc etc on the seafront. Then inland were the factories and workshops with typical industrial housing of the time! (I remember as a child just how rough some of the town was!) A completely different town altogether. Well when Brighton locomotive closed a few years after building it's last steam locomotive for BR ('80154') in 1957. Dad was put through a marine engineering course by BR but he was made redundant in 1961 and by 1963 he was working on tugs out of Sheerness commuting between home and work on a Vincent Rapide. Well he got fed up with that so we moved to the Isle of Sheppey that year. Well due to the change from steam to diesel at sea had the same effect that it had on the railways as a result he was made redundant a few months after we moved. Well he was in a Pub near Faversham where he met one of the engineers from Chislet Colliery and during the conversation it became apparent that the pit which was installing a new overhead electric rail system underground and someone with railway experience would be useful! So that was how he got into mining. By 1965 he was on the 'back shift" moving the equipment forward between 10pm & 6am. He would often take me to the pit on Sunday afternoons so that he could get things organised for the week ahead and so that I could look at the locomotives and equipment. Well the first time I was taken underground was in 1966 I was 8! I must admit when I saw what he did every working day I was amazed. I have always had the greatest respect for pit workers. As it is most certainly "The hardest work under heaven". Unfortunately his mining career ended in 1969 due to unexpected closure of Chislet. This was totally political the trouble was that Lord Robens insisted on a 25% cut in production. Kent had four pits so one had to close. It was pathetic as Chislet was converting from advanced face longwall to retreat face longwall. Dad and many others pointed out that a great deal of time and money had been spent but it was set in stone and that was that. Well he was offered a job at Betteshanger but it was had to get to from Sheppey. My Mum and Sister had moved back to the Brighton area in 1968 to help look after my Grandmother. Mum made it clear that she didn't want to move again. So Dad went back to sea when the NCB dispensed with his services! But he kept up his contacts in the industry and he often organised visits. As a child I suffered from various "educational issues" and was packed off to a specialist boarding school in North Shropshire. As Dad pointed out that this would prove interesting! He wasn't wrong about that as one of the staff came from a "Black Country" mining tradition and I was taken to all of the local pits in North Wales, Shropshire and Staffordshire as well as some in Cumberland and Lancashire . In all probability I would have gone underground but on Monday 14/6/1969 towards the end of my first year at boarding school I jumped out of a tree and I broke my right leg so badly that it had to be amputated. Tom Ellis the Manager at Bersham explained to me very gently why I couldn't be a miner in 1973. But I was able to make several underground visits. Certainly the most poignant was a visit to Gresford one Saturday afternoon in February 1973. The pit closed that November. Also the school was very good and provided I organised things we could have a pit visit or something similar once a fortnight! The high point was a ten day trip to South Wales in 1974 when we visited every pit that had either Steam locomotives or Steam Winders! Not surprisingly the 1984 strike was very difficult and we had lads from Kent camping in our garden as they picketed Brighton B Power Station. Well one day Mum came home early from work all bandaged up It turned out that she had been punched in the face by her younger sister who was a staunch Tory. A few days before mum died in 2013 she said to me that she had forgiven her sister but she would neve forget what had happened. This year accepted I usally go to the Czech Republic and Poland looking at the fast disappearing Coal industry The last underground visit being at KWK Jas-Mos in May 2017.. Also I have been to the former Yugoslavia on a number of times looking at the coal industry. Particularly in Bosnia and Serbia it is like stepping back to the late 1960's or the early 1970's. With both steam locomotives and steam winding engines still in service. I am very glad and grateful that I have been able to see these things.

My dad, Ken, worked at Thoresby from 1953 to 1981.

It was a fantastic place to work...I was there until the last day!

Michael Allen??

because we were not aloud to take anything that could create a spark or flame,

@jeff.uk01 Thank you