browseDurham Coalfield
John Davies (Photographer), Graeme Rigby (Writer)
Text from the Amber Catalogue, 1987:
This exhibition focuses on one industry’s effect on the landscape - coal production. John Davies, one of Britain’s foremost landscape photographers, has concentrated on the comparatively few places in the area (about 70 pits were closed during the 1960s) that are still producing coal - mainly 13 working collieries, the major opencast mines, and to a lesser extent the drift mines and sea-coal gatherers. His photographs, with their combination of general view and finely noted detail, make powerful and visually sensitive documents of the effect on the Durham landscape of two centuries of coal mining.
Text to accompany this exhibition has been written by Graeme Rigby who has worked closely with the photographer on this project. He writes: Slowly the reclamation work continues. County Durham is being tidied up after the monumental social and industrial upheaval that it has been through. Even a slag heap can be looked back on in pride as a remembered achievement.
Davies’ fine pictures are a testament to this. Davies is very much a narrative landscape photographer, interested, even in his ‘purest’ landscapes in telling visual stories about process, change, transformation.
Note: The commissioning of this exhibition in 1983 was part of Amber’s and Side Gallery’s response to then coming struggle between the miners and the British government over the future of the coal industry. For the same reasons, early in 1984, Bruce Rae was commissioned to produce a portrait of the community of Easington Colliery.
Text by Graeme Rigby, 1983, rewritten for 2nd exhibition run, 1984:
I
See where the water’s lying? There. At the edge of that field. Used to lie further up. You notice things like that if you've lived round a place all your life. It's the old seam. It runs right along under there. You can see the line of it if you look.
Standing at a bus stop. An unsolicited piece of information. You could see the line of it: a dip in the land, a fold running from West to East.
Where they dug all the coal out. It’s just collapsing in. It'll work its way further down towards those houses before it stops.
Slowly collapsing. West to East.
1983: the 100th Durham Miners’ Gala. The Big Meeting justifying its name again. The banners of pits long closed have been brought out for the occasion. Some kept by the NUM in Durham. Some unearthed from the cupboards of Miners’ Institutes all oyer the county. Miners’ Institutes that have now become Community Associations. There is a sense of the coalfield. Of its extent. A celebration of what has been.
II
Mining started in the west of the county, where the coal was closer to the surface - far easier and far cheaper to extract. It wasn’t until the 1820s that they tried sinking through the limestone escarpment of East Durham. As far back as then, the best seams were being worked out in the West. Look at a map of County Durham - at the hundreds of colliery settlements. Only Sacriston remains as a working colliery west of the limestone.
Coal mining is an extractive industry. From the moment they start, they're looking forward to closure.
The extraction of coal and the closure of pits has left a pattern of industrial villages without much of an industrial future. The process has been going on for a long time. Just as the coalfield attracted workers to Durham in the first place, so the population has shifted east within the county. In the fifties and sixties, many moved out of the area altogether to other coalfields, other opportunities.
III
10 Downing Street
Whitehall SW1
11th January, 1951
Dear Friend
Before Christmas the leaders of your National Union called on you to make a special effort to increase output and in particular to work on Saturdays. There was a fine response and I want to thank you for what you did then.
But I want to ask you to carry on with your effort right through the winter months.
We are still threatened with a serous shortage of coal. Apart form difficulties in our homes there is a real danger that industry may be slowed down. You will realise that this would mean unemployment for your fellow workers in other industries and hardship for their wives and families. It would also be a blow to our national recovery.
I am therefore asking you personally to do your best to help to avoid this danger.
I ask you on behalf of the Government and of the country to go to work on every regular working day throughout the next four months, and to attend all the Saturday shifts for which your pit is open or to work an extra half hour for five days, whichever is the custom in your district.
One final word: knowing you as I do I am sure that all of you will live up to the great traditions of your calling and provide the coal we need. The nation looks to you: I am sure that you will not fail the nation.
May I wish you and your family a happy and prosperous New Year.
Yours sincerely
C. R. Atlee
Every miner in the country was sent that. I kept mine. We had ’em over a barrel then. Should’ve said to them: “Aye, if you give us fifty bob not ten.” But we didn’t. We just did what we were asked. We were stupid. We should have used our strength when we had it.’
At Nationalisation there were 134 collieries in the Durham Coalfield. By 1959 there were 113. It was then, during the Sixties, that the great drop came. The closures.
It was Robens did for us. Just like Beeching did for the railways.
Reading through the list is like a memorial service for the county.
IV
There was a manager came. He’d already closed three pits. When the lads saw him coming, they knew the pit was going to close. And it did. He went on to close other pits after us. It was happening all over. Up till then we’d hewed it all out by hand, but they put in a plough. Mechanisation, like. They’d put in a twenty four inch plough. Why, the seam was only twenty two inch, it was a thin seam. The ploughs weren’t designed for these kind of conditions. The pits would close.
A large number of the pits were exhausted, although many old miners will debate with you as to which were and which weren’t. Looking at the list of closures, you notice an increasing number closed for economic reasons - from the mid-sixties onwards. But the economics would have varied from pit to pit, and whose economics were they anyway? Economic decisions depend on your priorities. Looking back, it seems certain that the decline of the coalfield could have been phased over a much longer period. But the sixties were a time of opportunities. Elsewhere. There was little opposition to the closures.
The Great Period of Closures
1962
Westerton (Moorhill Drift), exhaustion
Allerdene, difficulties
Esperley Drift, exhaustion
Randolph Hutton, exhaustion
Victoria Garesfield, exhaustion
Tanfield Lea, exhaustion
Eldon Drift, exhaustion
Wingate, difficult to work
Beamish 2nd, exhaustion
Malton, exhaustion
1963
Addison, exhaustion
Waldridge D, exhaustion
Fenhall Drift, economics
Heworth, exhaustion
Stargate, exhaustion
Roddymoor, exhaustion
Wooley, exhaustion
1964
Watergate, exhaustion
Phoenix Drift (Greenside), exhaustion
Derwent, exhaustion
Crook Drift, exhaustion
Stanley Burn, exhaustion
East Tanfield, exhaustion
Lambton, exhaustion
Pelton, exhaustion
Tudhoe Mill, exhaustion
South Pelaw, exhaustion
1965
Harraton, economics
Sherburn Hill, economics
New Shildon, economics
Bradley Drift, exhaustion
West Thornley, economics
Witton, exhaustion
Dean & Chapter, economics
Lumley 6th, economics
North Tees, economics
Clara Vale, exhaustion
Beamish Mary, economics
1966
Burnopfield Drift (Barcus Close), exhaustion
Greenside, exhaustion
Waterhouses (new face developed for 1 year in 1965), exhaustion
Middridge Drift, economics
Chopwell, economics
Thrislington, exhaustion
Deaf Hill, exhaustion*
1967
Bowburn, economics
Brancepeth, exhaustion
West Auckland, exhaustion
Staindrop Fieldhouse, exhaustion
Chester Moor, exhaustion
Kimblesworth, geological conditions
Hamsterley, exhaustion
Ravensworth Park, major faulting
Byer Moor, exhaustion
Trimdon Grange, economics
Handen Hold, thin coal, plough tried, economics
Brandon, poor coal, economics
1968
Towneley Emma, exhaustion
Wheatley Hill, economics
Stanley Cottage, economics, geological conditions bad
Brusselton, economics, water
Marsden, economics, geological
Esh, economics, absenteeism
Washington F, exhaustion
Mainsforth, economics, Low Main flooded
Hobson, exhaustion
1969
Follonby (Wardley), economics
Craghead, economics, Busty exhausted
Tudhoe Park, economics, poor coal, limited reserves
Harton, economics
Thornley, economics, geological conditions, heavy loss
V
The factories were coming on then. In the Sixties. They’ve mostly closed now, but they were coming on then. Some of the lads went to Wales. Some went to the Midlands. They put up coloured slides in the Institute, tel1ing everybody what nice places they were down in Wales - all the scenery - telling them that they had years to work.
The bulk of the workforce was moved to the coastal pits. Picked up and brought home by the miners’ buses that you still see ferrying workers from the old pit villages to the working collieries.
We were told about a month beforehand that the pit was closing. We finished Friday and started at Westoe on the Monday. You got seventy five per cent of your wages for six months and then you went down to your basic shift wages if there were no vacancies at power loading. At Pelton I used to get up at half past five to start at quarter to six. When I shifted to Westoe, it added an hour and three quarter to the beginning of the shift. And about an hour and a half on to the end. And you didn’t get paid for travelling time.
VI
After the Oil Crisis and the strike of 1974, there was a period of three years when there were no closures in Durham. The first time since the mid-fifties that a year had passed by without a pit closing. It was only three years, however, and the decline has continued. Today there are just eleven working collieries. Boldon closed in 1982. Marley Hill at the beginning of 1983. South Hetton has merged with Murton and Eppleton. In June 1983 the NCB announced serious flooding at East Hetton. It would need to be closed by Christmas. But things moved quickly. Within a fortnight the closure plan was brought forward. It was to be closed immediately. A pithead ballot accepted what was seen as inevitable.
The national papers were suddenly full of NCB closure plans. Norman Siddall, Chairman or the NCB, was talking of ‘Victorian holes in the ground’. A John the Baptist preparing the way for Ian MacGregor.
Bearpark was scheduled for closure in 1984. It closed a few weeks into the strike. Eleven working collieries. But the Coal Board want to close East Herrington and there is no indication that the decline would halt there under present policies.
VII
Closure lists have come and closure lists have gone. They have been revealed, they’ve been denied. They have been absolutely necessary to the future of the industry, they have been withdrawn. They have been on agendas and they've been off them. Only five pits come out with a tentative ring of confidence - Dawdon, Easington, Murton, Wearmouth and Westoe. And murmurs about them are not unknown.
As for the others, they all seem to have questions against their names of one kind or another: ‘economics’, exhaustion, quality of coal, water, geological problems.
Natural contraction of the industry through the sixties, with the older collieries, particularly in West Durham, closing over the years has led to a gradual eastward 'migration' and production becoming increasingly concentrated in the coastal belt.
It is in these coastal pits, strung along the eastern seaboard, that the future prosperity of the region’s coalfields is based. Coal in the North East - an introduction to North-East Coal Digest 1982-83, published by NCB North East
VIII
From the coast, they are extracting further and further under the sea. The coalface at Easington is now some five miles from the shaft. Exploration plotting forward reserves for Wearmouth involves drilling boreholes four to seven miles off-shore. A few years ago it would have been considered to be international waters.
But where there is a future, there is investment:
Since the formation of' the North-East Area in April 1974, more than £140 million has been earmarked for several major projects designed to exploit the Area's undersea reserves - because it is essential that men and management get the right tools to do an effective job. Coal in the North East, NCB
The NCB, very clearly, sees the future for the Durham Coalfield in terms of undersea operations and opencasting.
IX
Deep mining pushes eastwards under the sea. In the west, opencasting scoops out the coal that was abandoned in the Sixties.
All a question of ‘economics’:
Opencast in North East, production 3,000,000 tonnes, profit £30,000,000 profit, workforce 1,000 approx.
Deep Mines in North East, production 12,000,000 tonnes, loss £50,000,000, workforce 26,000 approx.
Again, however, economics depend on which figures you add up and their ‘inevitability’ is being questioned. Up until 1981, the NUM accepted opencasting - perhaps accepting the argument that it helped to offset deep mining losses. Economic perceptions change and so do union leaderships and policies. The NUM will now support the active opposition to new opencast licenses.
Opencast profits can offset - they can also threaten the economic viability of some deep mining operations. Particularly when excess coal stocks are part of the ‘economic’ arguments for closure.
Opencast operations are also private operations - contractors licensed by the NCB. The workforce is TGWU, not NUM. The NUM has little involvement and less control. There are, no doubt, many in the NUM who wish the fight had been taken up earlier.
X
There is an irony in the way private capital is once again responsible for exploiting the coal reserves in the west. The small drift mines and opencast sites are, at present, part of NCB overall planning - licensed activities - but the high levels of opencast profits must make the sector vulnerable to polices of more clear-cut privatisation.
Opencasting is a short-term operation in each case. Extraction followed by landscaping. The old waste heaps are being landscaped too. How many golf courses and football pitches, how much ‘recreational land’ will Durham have by the time the process is finished? And will they ever transport an old slag heap to Beamish Museum, where it can be remembered?*
Some land is designated for industrial usage. But where are the industrial users? Some land is returned to agriculture - the quality of the land can change completely at a fence's edge. But agriculture will not provide an employment future for a population the size of Durham’s.
Postscript July 1984. No Gala this year. A rally, eighteen weeks into the strike. If last year was a celebration of what has been, this year was a fight not to lose what is left. A number of the banners, from pits which have been closed, were there again - Craghead, Adventure, Blackhall. They were joined by new banners and makeshift banners - Durham Miners’ Family Aid, Burnhope Women support the miners. A feeling of the county.
Durham. A workforce attracted to a coalfield from all over the country. A massive 19th Century expansion.
Durham.
And nowhere else to go.
Acknowledgements: National Coal Board (North East); National Union of Mineworkers (Durham Branch); Mostly Mining by William Moyes; Contracting Coalfield by William Moyes; Mr F. Cooper; Mr E. Robson & many other individuals.
*Note, 2007: They did.