Hanham Coal Mine and Work Underground
Many local workers were miners in the twenties, suffering long hours in appalling conditions for little pay. Jack Britton, whose father was a miner, describes vividly the closing of the mine was not altogether a bad thing:
Although much has been written about Bristol’s coal fields, very little has been said about our own mine in Hanham. The ‘Bedminster, Easton, Kingswood and Parkfield Collieries Ltd’ owned Dean Lane, Bedminster, Great Western, Feeder Road, Easton, Hanham, Kingswood and Parkfield collieries. Hanham pit was situated in Memorial Road, near enough where the diecasting factory now stands.
The road was called Pit Road, but later named Memorial Road, after Memorial Cottage. At the rear end of the diecasting, there still remains the slag heap or tip as it was called, the rubbish of the pit, small dust or slag. At the side was the incline, where drams of coal were lowered by ropes on rails to the river’s edge, then loaded onto barges, taken by river to Bristol and Bath, and towed by horses along the banks, which in those days were called Tow Paths. I expect there are quite a few old coal drams still lying on the river bed after running off the rails.
Underground, the drams ran in one direction. This was because of the river at the back of the mine. The main dram road ran under Cock Road and looped under the Kingswood Hotel, which is now the British Legion Club. Under the Kingswood Hotel they called it the 'parting of the ways', roads branching off in different directions. From then on you crawled on hands and knees, sometimes on your stomach, naked except for an old pair of football shorts, to reach the coal face.
Older miners, it is said, put names to the places where they were working. Coming upon a rich seam of coal, remarking 'this Soundswell', or 'now we're made forever’ (New Cheltenham). Who knows if it’s true or false? Many of the miners lived in cottages and small dwellings, called in those days 'Ragged Lane' (Vicarage Road), 'Mud Rank' opposite Christchurch, Anstey’s Lane (Church Road end). The rent in those days averaged half a crown or 2/6d, a week.
It was not always collected as the rent man often found the occupants out, or hiding under the table. One tenant, leaning out of his bedroom window, was overheard telling the collector, 'You shall have your rent even if I have to sell the house'. Times were bad. 1923 saw the miner earning just over two pounds a week, 8s 216d a shift, if you were on a good seam of coal; nothing, no pay if you were laid off for roof falls, flooding, or poor quality digging.
All this work was done by hard graft: hands, picks, shovels — no conveyor belts or powered coal cutters in those days, and often working in water and near-total darkness. The miner helped supplement his pay by selling the coal ticket which he was allocated. The ticket was worth 2/6d to him, and people would buy it then pay to have the coal delivered.
The transport in those days was the horse and cart, and the handcart. You could hire a handcart, for 1d or 2d an hour, from Wride’s opposite Hanham Church Old School, or Walt Jones oppositethe Maypole, at the end of the old Police Station rank.
image above: The Swan Conham - This was once a delightfully unspoilt old fashioned three-bar spit and saw dust pub - An ex-miners pub for Hanham Colliery still known as 'Fanny Bailey's' by Local's after a former landlady.
The two pubs the miners used were ‘The Swan’ (Fanny Bailey’s), or ‘The Crown and Horseshoe’, now renamed ‘The Maypole’. Older people of Hanham always called it ‘The Maypole’ anyway. The miners were often given a bad name for spending most of their lives in pubs.
This is quite untrue, they spent most of their lives, 8 hours a day, not seeing sunlight, crawling in the bowels of the earth on hands and knees or on their stomachs, hacking coal, breathing foul air, dust, gases, enduring roof falls or flooding, and wondering if they would ever see daylight again only, in many cases, to die at an early age through the dreaded Miners Lung disease. Surely they deserved a drink to swill away the dust and memories of that shift?
1926 saw the General Strike. Hanham Pit closed and never re-opened. Some miners after the strike went to work in the South Wales pits, others got jobs on the buildings or in boot factories. Some took work home to finish in their out-houses or workshops. On the buildings, you were laid off in the bad months of winter or rainy days. In the boot and shoe trade there was a lot of short time through lack of orders, and this meant no money at all.
My grandfather, who was an ex-miner, lived with us and every Friday he would collect his old age pension, a 10/- note (50p). The first stop would be Fudge’s cooked meat and confectionary shop. He would change the note buying me a cake. Next he would buy himself a half-ounce of black shag tobacco.
Then he would give my mother half a crown for his keep, but he would buy his own food. Still, a lot of people were out of work or working short time. Children went to Hanham tip, dug for the small coal, wetted it,rolled it into balls, then went round selling them to help supplement the family income. Surface coal was found on the County Ground, which it was called in those days, at the top of Furber Road and St Anne’s Road. People could be seen digging there.
If you could not afford coal, there were always the off-cuts of leather, that is if you knew anyone working in the boot factories. You could always tell who was burning leather by the smoke coming out, and the smell.
There was not much call for chimney sweeps in those days as the leather often caught the chimney on fire and cleaned it. If this failed, on top of the cottages you would lower a brick on the end of a rope, dangle it down the chimney, tie a gorse bush on the end of the rope, and pull it back up. This was better than all the sweeps brushes in those days. Finally, I quote from an ex-miner: It was the worst days work I ever did when I went down there, and the best days work when they closed it. I think I am inclined to agree with him.
Horses ware used underground at this pit and occasionally they ware brought up to graze. They were hooded so that the light didn’t disturb them. Florence Young recalls a childhood memory:
My recollection of Hanham Colliery is of my grandfather’s donkey, (Jinny) pulling the coal cart along. Also, my brother and sister and I went to the entrance of the pit and dug a powdered substance like coal dust Then we dampened this with water, rolled it into balls, and sold it to people to keep their fires going. My father worked underground, and I can see him now with the crown of a felt hat on his head, with a carbide lamp fixed in the front.
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