Coal Miners - Birstall, UK - Occupational Monuments on Waymarking.com

Life Dahn t'Pit

The sculpture you see before you depicts two miners at work beneath the area which includes Oakwell Country Park in the 1960s. One is adjusting a prop holding up the roof above the coal seam. Stripped to his waist and lying on his side, the other miner is hewing coal from the coal face by hand.

The car park here was laid out directly over the site of the pit buildings. For example, the sculpture is located where the coolie car engine house to the drift mine stood - where miners boarded a "train" to take them to the coal face. The line drawing is of the view from the pit entrance, at exactly the point where today's car park entrance lies on the bend in Nutter Lane.

Imagine this whole area bustling with activity. Miners coming and going, the sound of machinery clanking away and coal, water and dirt everywhere.

The coal and dirt that came out of the mine was carried on conveyors to be separated by washing. The clean coal was stored in hoppers and dropped into waiting lorries. The dirt was taken and dumped on the spoil heaps.

But by 1973 the pit had become uneconomic. There were also fears of a sudden inrush of water deep underground, The workings that stretched from Drub to Drighlington were abandoned.

The National Coal Board quickly demolished all the buildings. Soon afterwards Kirklees Council landscaped the entire area to create a country park including all the dirt heaps here and on the other side of the M62.

"Life Dahn t'Pit" is a project conceived and devised by Spen Valley Civic Society with help from the Countryside Agency and Kirklees Council. The sculpture was commissioned from Xceptional Designs.

"I have been so bone-weary, I have never ached so much, I have never been in such despair in all my life. I look back even now over this distance, I look back on it with absolute horror"

"Bevan Boy" Gomersal Miner in 1940.

"... I were brought up wi' some real good men and they were all families on 'em, fathers, sons and uncles, you know, and they didn't just go t'pit you know, for big packet o' brass, didn't go for that, they went because they enjoyed their job and they worked hard I can tell you. They flogged their soul out. From going down to going out it were all hammer and tong like. They took a pride in their job".

Gomersal pit man born 1910.

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