A coal mine remembered

Paul Cox (UK)

During the 1980s, the secretary of the local branch of my professional association was famous for arranging field trips to places of interest. By and large, these had nothing to do with my profession, but they were nevertheless interesting places. One day, he had arranged a visit to a coal mine somewhere near St Helens and Wigan. Eight of us had managed to get time off work and so, there we were, gathered at the pithead office, having a lecture on mine safety.

Soon the lectures were finished and we were then given blue overalls to wear. The others looked quite smart, but my overalls had several holes and tears in them. They were so bad that I wondered if the last occupant was still alive. I thought perhaps that I should say something, but our guide seemed preoccupied with the lamp on the front of each of our yellow helmets. “Don’t turn them on yet”, we were told. “You must conserve the batteries for later.” Our lamp batteries were enormous things, strapped to a belt around the waste and they looked substantial enough to last for weeks.

At the pithead, we were shown into the pithead cage and soon we were descending at an enormous speed into the depths of the earth. After what seemed like an impossible length of time, the descent slowed and we came to a stop. The area in front of the cage was well lit and quite large, with a surprisingly high ceiling. In the near distance were several small huts – just what they were used for, I had no idea.

We walked across this open space to where a small electric train was waiting and sat in the open carriages. The train entered a large tunnel and travelled for a long time, perhaps for a mile or more. The air felt heavy, close and warm. Eventually, we stopped, left the train behind and continued walking down the tunnel. The ground beneath our feet was thick with black dust. The single row of lights running along the roof of the tunnel looked feeble against the jet black tunnel walls. Such was the feeling of isolation in the complete blackness that some of us turned on our helmet lights, but we were immediately instructed to turn them off again – discipline in a coal mine is strict.

Soon, a large iron door came into sight, set into the side of the tunnel wall. We assembled outside and our guide told us that this was the entrance to a disused adit. We were to use this as the safest way for us to access the coal face. At this point, all of us had to switch on our helmet lamps. After our guide had checked each lamp, the door was opened with an enormous rush of air and dust, which only ceased when the door was finally closed behind us, leaving us in the dusty tunnel with nothing but the light from our helmets to guide our way. The air was warmer than the previous tunnel and irritating dust caught at the back of my throat.

The walls of this tunnel were again jet black. Peering closely at the walls, I could not make out if they consisted of coal or some other rock. Steel girders, about one foot thick, had been bent into large hoops to support the tunnel roof. The tunnel itself originally had a semi-circular cross section, about eight foot high by eight foot wide, but now the rock walls bulged menacingly through the gaps between the girders. Some sections were almost impassable. In places, the girders were bent like a stick of liquorice, contorted far beyond what I would have thought possible without them snapping. At these locations, all that was left of the tunnel was a small gap, barely wide enough for each of us to squeeze through.

As we progressed, the noise of distant machinery started to grow louder. We then stopped at a hole in the ground, out of which the noise was coming. “We will now have to pass through a natural feature,” our guide informed us. One by one, we lowered ourselves into an underground cave. Once inside, we had to wait while those in front were helped out of a further hole in the roof of the cave. What force of nature had formed the cave I do not know. The whole structure was about 15 feet long and triangular in cross section. We were standing against a vertical wall about seven feet high. The dusty floor extended about another seven feet away from this wall. Over our heads, a solid slab of rock sloped from just above our heads to the ground, seven feet away.

While patiently waiting in line, I turned to my right to look at the rock forming the roof of the cave. What I saw suspended in front of my eyes was a carboniferous forest floor (Fig. 3). The rock was a light russet brown colour and in relief on the rock were perfectly preserved casts of leaves, twigs, seeds and other forest floor debris. I nudged the arm of the person in front and pointed to the rock. He did the same to the person in front of him and soon five or six of us were staring in amazement. So life-like was what we saw that none of us could resist reaching out to touch the rock to see if the leaves and twigs were real.

All too soon, we had to climb out of the cave, to find ourselves underneath the legs of a giant machine, which was holding up the roof above us. The scene was surreal. Every few feet, a steel column about two feet in diameter reached from the floor to the roof. Each column was supplied with several hydraulic lines. The overall effect was like being in a subterranean forest, with trees of steel and vines of armoured rubber. In the mid-distance through the columns, we could just about make out the coal face. Our guide told us that, as the coal face was cut further and further into the seam, so the columns moved forward to keep pace with the ever-retreating wall of coal. The roof behind the columns was then allowed to fall down under its own weight.

The columns stopped about ten feet short of the coal face. Here, we were allowed to watch as a huge cutting machine ripped into the face. The noise was near the threshold of pain and the dust was blinding, despite the copious draft made by the ventilation system.

Once the dust had cleared, the miners loaded the coal onto small trolleys on rails and these were taken away somewhere to our left. As soon as the coal had been moved, we were escorted along an upward sloping tunnel. Eventually, the tunnel levelled out and on our left was a conveyer belt passing through a smaller parallel tunnel. At our approach, a miner operated a lever and brought the conveyer to a halt. We were to travel upwards lying on the coal on top of the conveyer. Our guide gave us strict instructions to keep our heads down and not to look up, for the conveyor moved fast and, in places, there were rocks hanging down from the roof. While lying on the conveyer on a surprisingly soft bed of coal, I contrived to twist my head around and look up without actually lifting my head. Indeed, there were rocks jutting down from the roof and missing me by just a few inches.

I was somewhat disappointed when the conveyer stopped and we had to re-board a small train back to the lift. On reaching the surface, we headed to the pithead showers, where it became obvious from the banter between the miners that here was a close knit community – men who would be willing to lay down their lives for each other. Yet, I could not help noticing with sadness and dismay that many of the miners were “pigeon-chested” – a sign of silicosis. One of the causes of this crippling condition is the continual breathing in of a dusty atmosphere.

The mine is now long closed and its former workers hopefully spared the ravages of silicosis. And the cave will by now be flooded and, in all probability, its perfectly preserved forest floor will never again be seen by mankind.