Mick
Shotfirer.
Posts: 163
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Post by Mick on Jan 27, 2009 11:44:19 GMT -5
Gomersal Colliery was opened in 1911 but didn't really get going till the 1930s when two new shafts were sunk.
The coal from Gomersal first came out of Peacock pit about a mile up the road from Gomersal,but when the new shafts were sunk Peacock was closed that was around 1936.
Gomersal was a hand filling pit until the 50s when they tryed a plough in wat was called the main east part of the pit but it didn't work out so they went back to hand filling.
The seams worked were the Beeston and Blockin Bed,the beeston been about 120 yards from the top of the shaft and the Blocking Bed about 60 yards from the top.
The units in both seams were 200 to 250 yards long,in the Beeston they had three gates to a face main gate and two tail gates but in the Blocking Bed just two gates .
Hand filling was done on the day shift ,the ripping boring and gob drawing and part of the under cutting was done on the afternoons.
The night shift cut the rest of the face and built the face belt up ready for the day shift to start fillng again.
The fillers filled 15 to 16 yards of coal about 24 to 27ins thick with a 6ft cut.
In 1970 they tried another plough in the Blocking Bed seam on 6s,but after about 3 month that was again taken off as it could not cope with the thin seam.
Then again in 1973 they tried a AB 10/12 but just as it got going lofthouse was flooded and they found out that we had gone under some old workings that were full of water,so we had to close so in August 1973 it shut.
Mick
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Mick
Shotfirer.
Posts: 163
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Post by Mick on Jan 28, 2009 7:46:49 GMT -5
I forgot to say that in 1967 a drift was built from the surface to both the Blocking Bed and the Beeston seams,and the men then rode down the pit in a coolie car.
Mick.
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inbye
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Post by inbye on Jan 30, 2009 9:01:00 GMT -5
Interesting thread, Mick. Where exactly was the pit situated? & are there any remains left, today?
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Mick
Shotfirer.
Posts: 163
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Post by Mick on Jan 30, 2009 11:15:18 GMT -5
Hi Mate ,No there is nothing left of Gomersal at no time it was going to be the National coal mining museum.
But lack of money and firm plans put paid to that and it was flattened.
The pit was between Bradford and Dewsbury on the A652 next to Okwell Hall.
There is a large sculpture in the old pit yard,i will try and post a pi of it.
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inbye
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Post by inbye on Feb 1, 2009 11:46:53 GMT -5
Thought I would post a pic of a check, that came from Gomersal pit. It's not rare, but not that common, either.  Mick, do you happen to know if Gomersal used named checks, prior to 1947? |
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Mick
Shotfirer.
Posts: 163
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Post by Mick on Feb 1, 2009 16:19:05 GMT -5
Hi Inbye i dont know mate but i can find out for you,i know a lady that as got loads of info on Gomersal.
My check was 121 and me dads was 139 and both had gomersal on them,but i dont know if they dated prior to 1947.
Mick.
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Post by John on Feb 1, 2009 18:04:26 GMT -5
Mick, I'm working on the Coal, Collieries and Mining website at the moment. I'm going to host what I saved of the late Terry Blythes Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Pits site. Im trying to keep as close to Terry's format as possible.
I have 5 gigs of space and I forget how much bandwidth, but enough for hundreds of visitors daily. After I've done working on the site and uploading all the material I have, I would like to expand, say cover all the coalfields and pits. I'm sure I have the space, if not I can open a second site to accommodate the material.
How about collecting as much info, photos and stories from ex miners in your area as possible for me, so when I'm done on the main stuff then I can start on the North Yorkshire coalfield??
Now understand, this will be a big project!
Terry put a lot of spare time into his website, I still have many pages to edit and then "link" together to make a working subsite.
Each page takes over an hour to edit out the unwanted html tags etc.
I've decided to use my old Visual Page software in my old win98 computer to do the "legwork" putting everything together, then copy to CD and "polish" it off on this machine using "EVRSOFT First Page" text editor.
If you agree, I'll give you a "shopping list" to sort out!
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Mick
Shotfirer.
Posts: 163
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Post by Mick on Feb 1, 2009 18:33:52 GMT -5
Hi John that's fine by me,i will do my best to get as much info as i can (and pictures).
Mick.
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Post by John on Feb 1, 2009 19:38:34 GMT -5
OK then, I'll need all pits in the old NCB area, dates of sinking, production, method of getting, ie hand, single or double units, types of machines and dates of closure. In other words any info that's readily available on the various pits in that particular area. Nice to have seam names worked too and depths.. I'm still piecing information on Clifton and Cotgrave Collieries and I worked at them years ago!! Shane Phillips kindly emailed me hundreds of photos of surface and underground at many Notts and Derbyshire collieries, plus he scanned me a booklet on a new face that opened in the Blackshale seam at Cotgrave. Things like that Mick, should keep you busy for a while. ;D Here's the URL of the website, or what I have put up so far, mostly from my first website about 12 years or so back. The home page should give you an idea what's to come!! coalcollieryandmining.110mb.com/ |
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leon
Trainee
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Post by leon on Jun 20, 2009 12:17:19 GMT -5
hi im doing a project on the history of gomersal colliery and have looked in the book available at oakwell hall but as i am only 8 its all a bit complicated for me. What actually was mining? How did it work? Can anything be explained to me in a simple way?
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leon
Trainee
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Post by leon on Jun 20, 2009 12:21:47 GMT -5
what is the picture above of? Do you have any pictures of a davey lamp with diagrams how they work? Im trying to show pictures of past and now does anyone have any photos of the past? Or anything i could use in my project? My mum is helping do all this as i want to make a simple leaflet about it all for other children to understand.
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leon
Trainee
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Post by leon on Jun 20, 2009 12:23:33 GMT -5
for any replies or images please email them to my mum. purr010@hotmail.com thankyou
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Post by John on Jun 20, 2009 16:05:29 GMT -5
Well welcome young man, you've asked a lot of questions, what is mining?  That in itself could fill reams of paper up. On this site we deal mainly on coal mining topics, so mining coal is what we are about. Coal has been mined in the UK for centuries, but just for household use and for blacksmiths way back. Problem with houses back then was they had no chimney, but had a hole in the roof to let smoke out, so coal wasn't real popular. Coal was probably found when someone dug a well for water, then it was exploited and sold. The early miners would have used wooden tools, wedges and a large wood mallet to break pieces of coal from the seam. Best advice I can give you is get your Mum to got to the Links Page on this site and go through the various sites, there's a wealth of good sites with photos stories and drawings both surface and underground in coal mines. Also, get your Mum to got to Youtube typr in the keyword "longwall coal mining" and there are some old training movies of underground UK coal mines! You might also visit my personal website, although far from finished, there are many photos, an old British Coal Booklet on a coalface being set up at Cotgrave Colliery in Nottinghamshire, plus tons of other info, it's at coalcollieryandmining.110mb.com/If after going through all that info you have more questions, drop back here and we will see how we can answer them. |
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Post by dazbt on Jun 20, 2009 16:35:28 GMT -5
what is the picture above of? Do you have any pictures of a davey lamp with diagrams how they work? Im trying to show pictures of past and now does anyone have any photos of the past? Or anything i could use in my project? My mum is helping do all this as i want to make a simple leaflet about it all for other children to understand. Hya Leon, save your mum a lot of trouble and take her to The National Mining Museum at Caphouse near Wakefield, you will not only see answers to everything you want to know about coal mining you can actually go underground on a guided tour and feel what it was like, your mum will love it too ......... it's all free. www.ncm.org.uk/ |
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Post by John on Jun 20, 2009 16:45:40 GMT -5
And if your in Lancashire, there's a coalmining museum in Manchester, one in South wales and another in Scotland.
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inbye
Shotfirer.
Posts: 114
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Post by inbye on Jun 21, 2009 6:02:14 GMT -5
And if your in Lancashire, there's a coalmining museum in Manchester, one in South wales and another in Scotland. John, if you're thinking of Buile Hill Museum (in Manchester) it closed down years ago. (The mansion with the mine layout in the basement). |
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Post by John on Jun 21, 2009 8:02:02 GMT -5
Don't think it was that one, but somewhere on the site is a list of museums that are open, including the Beamish one. I used the search function, but nothing turned up, I'll take a look around the boards later and place a link to it from here.
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inbye
Shotfirer.
Posts: 114
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Post by inbye on Jun 21, 2009 13:33:40 GMT -5
Don't think it was that one, but somewhere on the site is a list of museums that are open, including the Beamish one. I used the search function, but nothing turned up, I'll take a look around the boards later and place a link to it from here. If it turns out to be Salford mining museum (Buile Hill) then it's closed. The only other Mining Museum in the Manchester area, is Astley Green Colliery (I think) A good lamp site is www.thewandofscience.net hosted by an authority on miners lamps, David Barrie. |
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Post by John on Jun 22, 2009 7:42:12 GMT -5
Don't think it was that one, but somewhere on the site is a list of museums that are open, including the Beamish one. I used the search function, but nothing turned up, I'll take a look around the boards later and place a link to it from here. If it turns out to be Salford mining museum (Buile Hill) then it's closed. The only other Mining Museum in the Manchester area, is Astley Green Colliery (I think) A good lamp site is www.thewandofscience.net hosted by an authority on miners lamps, David Barrie. Astley Green was the one I was thinking about, thanks, memories got "beat knee" these days due to aging! |
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Post by imari on Dec 31, 2016 4:19:50 GMT -5
Is there any book, or other account of the flooding, and the rescue operations which took place around 1973 and caused the closing of Gomersal mine? Was there any suspicion at the time, (as pits were under threat of closure), about the cause of the flooding?
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Post by mickwarden on Sept 1, 2017 0:00:14 GMT -5
My time at gummersal was short lived, I remember going on a school trip, or day visit, to the mine sometime in 1965/66 I think, when I got there all the workers were asking, where's Jack Warden,s lad? Sheepishly I put my hand up, I'm here, that was it, my path was set.
Left school summertime, 1966, 5 o'clock bus from Haworth rd, Bradford centre, 6 o'clock bus to gummersal, that was my daily routine for the next few years, not bad for a 15 year old, lol
i started on the top as a timber lad, unloading wagons that delivered the various timbers, next was to load coolies, as I remember, and carts to be sent down the pit
16 now, down the pit, wow, a couple of years working the gates supplying timber to the lads on the faces,
i seem to remember doing my face training in Wakefield a couple of days a week at a mock pit? even doing pit pony training, I'm sure that took me up to 1969ish, got the sack for bad time keeping, joined the army,
had some good times at the pit and made some good friends, and not so good friends,
my father was a bit miffed but glad I'd joined up, he worked in the pits but left to fight in the war, then went back to the pits,
now coming up 66 I might refer about the pits to my gdaughter, she looks at me and say, what's a pit.
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Post by mickwarden on Sept 1, 2017 9:25:11 GMT -5
I forgot to say that in 1967 a drift was built from the surface to both the Blocking Bed and the Beeston seams,and the men then rode down the pit in a coolie car. Mick. Hi Mick i think the drift was done before 67, I started 66 and it was there then, in fact, instead of waiting for the coolie we used to ride the belt up jump off at the intersection then back on, god help us if we got caught but it was regular practice, |
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That in itself could fill reams of paper up. On this site we deal mainly on coal mining topics, so mining coal is what we are about.