The Harrison Family – Victoria Garesfield
The Harrisons, before my dad, had already been miners for three generations. My grand-dad, Roger Stephen (Stevie) Harrison, originally from Mickley Square, had arrived in the area at the turn of the century, marrying Elizabeth Nicholson in 1902 at St. Patrick’s Church. My grandmother, Elizabeth, was born at Victoria Garesfield 1884, her family living at Chopwell Cottages. Whilst my grandparents had moved back to Northumberland a couple of years after their marriage, by 1911 they had returned to Victoria Garesfield. |
From the age of six or so, my dad, John George (Jackie) Harrison, grew up at No. 10 Railway Terrace, known locally as ‘Jigger Raa’ given its proximity to the colliery screens and in 1933, he married my mother, Margaret Ann (Annie) Richardson who was from High Spen, her father, William Richardson, a miner at Garesfield Bute pit. My parents were housed at Victoria Terrace, number 48, the place that was to be my home; this being the end house by the cut which ran between the brick houses and the wooden ducketts. |
I was the youngest of the family, there being my sister Nancy and my two brothers Stephen and Billy.
Nancy attended the local grammar school at Hookergate and went on to a great career in nursing. Although my dad had gone to great lengths to keep my eldest brother Stephen out of the pit, securing him a mechanic’s apprenticeship at the engineering workshops at Clockburn Drift, Winlaton Mill, Stephen initially gave this up to work as a pony putter at Victoria Garesfield. He stayed in the mines for a while, also working at Barcus Close, before joining the army and moving away. My brother Billy also chose the forces, and joined the Coldstream guards at the age of 17. Then there was me… my story is as follows. |
JOHN
EARLY WORKING DAYS February 1958, on my fifteen birthday, I left school for a job on a local farm. I enjoyed the work, being outside in the open-air, but the job didn’t pay. I stuck this out for a year or so, then one day I asked the local colliery official when the trading officer was next coming to Garesfield – he being the man you needed to see to get a job at the pit – the year was 1959, I was 16.
A START AT THE PIT I was told to wait for the trading officer at a certain day at a given time and met him on the bridge off Lintzford Lane near the exit of the Brockwell drift. I remember the day well; there were four of us waiting for a job and I was the only one taken on, in spite of being the youngest. Whilst I don’t know the reason, this could have been down to the reputation of my dad and grandad as both were known to be real grafters. In his day, my grandad Stevie worked with a hand-pick and I was told he would be always found in a cloud of sweat and smoke – the smoke coming from the pipe he constantly smoked - and if someone happened to fill 10 tubs, he would have to fill 11! |
AT THE SCREENS My first job at Victoria Garesfield was on the surface, unloading the tubs at the screens. This was where the coal arrived to be sorted and size graded and that’s where lots of young lads started off, working alongside old or infirm miners. A couple of Garesfield lads, known not to be quite ‘the full shilling’ were also employed there - that there was work for everyone at the pit was a good thing. At the screens we were all datal workers; that’s to say paid at a flat daily rate; without any bonuses, incentives or such like.
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PONY-PUTTING AT ASHTREE DRIFT When I turned 17, I went to the ‘Vic’ seam where I learned mining skills and shortly afterwards I got a position as a pony-driver at the Brockwell seam, working at the Ashtree Drift, Low Spen. My job was to drive my pony to take tubs from a ‘flat’ to a ‘landing’. Coal was cut and loaded into tubs at the face by the hewer then taken out by the ‘putter’ to a flat. From there a pony-driver would couple two or three tubs up to the limbers of a pony and drive the pony to a landing which was the organisation and transport centre for coal on its way out the pit and for empty tubs coming back in.
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RIDING THE LIMBERS My early days down the pit didn't get off to the best start when I had a close call 'riding the limbers*.
I was putting for five or six hewers with a pony called Davy, driving him up a hill to the South Flat. A quick push, I jumped on the limbers and we were off. But just as we started to climb Davy stood on a sleeper and lost his footing. His hind quarters shot up against the roof, knocking-out a steel strap support an inch and a half thick and seven foot long, which came crashing down jamming me between it and the tub. I immediately found myself choking and in total darkness, I was terrified.
Dazed and injured, with a damaged shoulder and three broken ribs, I somehow managed to struggle free and it was two stone men working nearby, Neppy Bryne and Rocky Miller, who carried me on a stretcher for a mile underground, out to an ambulance. A few weeks later I was back at work. I was seventeen or eighteen at the time.
(* Limbers were a wishbone-shaped device that fitted around the hind quarters of the pit pony then to the pony's collar or braffin. At the back of the limbers was a straight piece of wood maybe less than a foot long,a chain was attached to this and in turn coupled to full or empty tubs, this straight piece of wood is where the driver would sit.)
I was putting for five or six hewers with a pony called Davy, driving him up a hill to the South Flat. A quick push, I jumped on the limbers and we were off. But just as we started to climb Davy stood on a sleeper and lost his footing. His hind quarters shot up against the roof, knocking-out a steel strap support an inch and a half thick and seven foot long, which came crashing down jamming me between it and the tub. I immediately found myself choking and in total darkness, I was terrified.
Dazed and injured, with a damaged shoulder and three broken ribs, I somehow managed to struggle free and it was two stone men working nearby, Neppy Bryne and Rocky Miller, who carried me on a stretcher for a mile underground, out to an ambulance. A few weeks later I was back at work. I was seventeen or eighteen at the time.
(* Limbers were a wishbone-shaped device that fitted around the hind quarters of the pit pony then to the pony's collar or braffin. At the back of the limbers was a straight piece of wood maybe less than a foot long,a chain was attached to this and in turn coupled to full or empty tubs, this straight piece of wood is where the driver would sit.)
THE TERRIBLE WINTER OF 1947 Whilst most men who worked at Victoria Garesfield lived close by at High Spen and Highfield, at Ashtree Drift I worked with Jack Tilley, a hewer, who lived a fair distance away at Winlaton. Jack got himself a reputation - good with most, bad with a few - during the terrible snow storm of 1947. Jack, I was told, was on night shift and due to start at one in the morning. He walked three and a half miles through a blizzard and snow drifts in freezing temperatures, to get into work and on time for his shift. Not everyone, however, admired Jack for this feat, for when some men on day shift called the colliery to say they couldn't get in they had their wages stopped in view of the fact that Jack had managed to report for work. This resulted in bad feeling on the part of those particular men who thereafter saw fit to send Jack 'to Coventry' as the saying goes.
A FINE HEWER, TALENTED MUSICIAN At the Brockwell I also worked with John Armstrong. John was a hewer and lived at High Spen. A strong, strapping fellow with huge arms and shoulders - the torso of an athlete - John was also a talented, self-taught musician who played the violin and a whole range of wind instruments.
A FINE HEWER, TALENTED MUSICIAN At the Brockwell I also worked with John Armstrong. John was a hewer and lived at High Spen. A strong, strapping fellow with huge arms and shoulders - the torso of an athlete - John was also a talented, self-taught musician who played the violin and a whole range of wind instruments.
And so back to me - from pony-driver I became a pony-putter and I did this for about two and half years or so up until the pit at Victoria Garesfield was closed in 1962.
HUNTER’S COLLIERY, MEDOMSLEY: ‘THE DERWENT’ After the closure, the trading officer advised us that the best, meaning the most modern, pit to transfer to was Kibblesworth but that was some ten miles away and I was reluctant to move away from home at that time.
So, like many of the men who’d been working at Victoria Garesfield, I opted for Hunter’s Colliery at nearby Medomsley. Little, however, did any of us imagine what awaited us there! Hunter colliery was also known as ‘the Derwent’ - and indeed it was no less than a soaken sump hole! Working there was a nightmare. I would do eight and a quarter hour shifts, day in day out, freezing cold and soaken wet...it was impossible to get warm. Conditions were atrocious which meant that on top of the physical discomfort, it was also impossible to earn more than the minimum wage of ten or eleven pounds per week; the ‘mini’ as we called it.
To give an idea of how difficult working there was, I’ll give you the example of ‘Bruce’. Bruce was a lovely chestnut gelding I’d worked with at the Brockwell drift at Victoria Garesfield where, on the flat, he could pull 6 tubs no problem. Bruce had transferred with me to Medomsley, but there, straining for all his life, he couldn’t manage to pull more than one tub up to the flat, so steep it was, with water gushing down it like a river! |
Whereas at Victoria Garesfield there had been just one shift; 8 ‘til 3, at Medomsley there were three: one starting 8 in the morning, one 3 in the afternoon, and one 11 at night. Getting to and from the pit was no easy matter either.
Although I had a motor bike, if it happened to be off the road or couldn’t be used – in bad weather and in winter for example – I had to walk from Victoria Garesfield to Lintzford then catch a bus to the bottom of Medomsley bank from where I would walk up another bank to the pit. Coming home from the pit was worse; exhausted after a shift, wet-through and freezing, I’d only start to get warm once I‘d made it back home. |
A FATEFUL ACCIDENT, A FATEFUL DECISION In all events, working at Medomsley was not for me and following a fateful accident when I got my leg nipped by a tub I was forced to stay off work.
It was at this point I told myself there had to be other ways of making a decent living - more to life than struggling in such hellish conditions - and I made up my mind never to go back. I was about 20 or 21.
This decision caused a lot of bad feeling between me and my dad – jobs weren’t easy to get in those days, and for my dad’s generation, a job with the National Coal Board was thought to be a job for life; in the early 50s there were over 130 mines in County Durham employing over 120 000 men; a quarter of the male population. |
My dad was not the mild, ‘genteel’ type, and like many a pitman of his day, he raised racing pigeons which he kept in a cree on our allotment.
After long hours underground you craved contact with a more natural world and allotments were the ideal place to find this; a place you could escape, even if only temporarily, into a world of your own, away from the demands of work. The keen edge of competition and a sense of pride – traits which characterised many a pitman - could be seen carried over to interests such as pigeon rearing and racing (along with leek growing and competitions) which was underpinned by a quest for perfection. |
GREAT MEMORIES OF GREAT MEN Of the three years or so I worked at Victoria Garesfield, to this day I have great memories of great times; memories of the camaraderie, the unique bond between miners - a unique breed of working men - of the ‘craic’, the banter and many a tale told by many great men; ‘heroes’ in the eyes of a young Garesfield lad.
John 'Garesfielder' Harrison - June 2016
John 'Garesfielder' Harrison - June 2016