Rare underground photos show the harsh reality of life at Westoe Colliery

The pit, the last of its kind on the banks of the Tyne, closed in 1993 and its Crown Shaft Tower was demolished a year later

These rare underground photos show the harsh reality and stark beauty of the North East’s mining heritage.

They reveal what life was like for those who worked hundreds of feet below the ground in unforgiving conditions.

The coal industry was once at the heart of the region’s economy, employing hundreds of thousands of people - many of whom died in the course of their dangerous work.

And people can delve into the history for themselves when this collection of images showing Westoe Colliery in South Tyneside goes on display at South Shields Central Library from April 14.

There will be an event from 2pm to 5pm on the day to mark the anniversary of the demolition of the Crown Shaft Tower in 1994, the moment which sealed the fate of the once-formidable site.

These pictures were taken by Aidan Doyle, who was given unprecedented access to the mine before its closure.

read on, great gallery:
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/history/rare-underground-photos-show-harsh-11156315 

I had the privilege of visiting Westoe twice, once in the late 80's and again in the early 90's with a delegation from Blenkinsopp Colliery, just before closure. Descending the Crown Shaft, one of the miners was heard to quip that the ochre on he shaft walls looked like "wor lass's chip pan"

At the shaft bottom, we alighted a manrider for the 40-minute journey to the face, some 7 miles out under the North Sea., and passing directly beneath the WWII wrecks of the Oslofjord and Eugenia Chandris off South Shields bay.

We were given a tour of one of the working faces, got pelted with coal as the cutter roared past, then received a hands-on masterclass in moving the Dowty chocks forward. We were also shown the large area of coal left unmined around one of the prospecting boreholes drilled in the seabed, and a huge underground spiral coal hopper.

Returning to surface, we showered, changed, then tucked into a generous buffet provided for guests. Having thanked our hosts, and as we exited the colliery gate, we could hear the brass band practicing.

Epilogue: Alex was awoken that night in excruciating agony, so his wife called an ambulance. He was diagnosed with a passing kidney stone, which surprised the medics as these things normally stay put unless violently shaken loose. That manrider did have pretty basic suspension!:o

Thanks for posting the link, brings back some treasured and poignant memories.

MARK

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Interesting photos but I fail to see the "harsh reality" part of the statement.
Just a normal pit to me?

Les

Interesting photos but I fail to see the "harsh reality" part of the statement.
Just a normal pit to me?

Les

If that is harsh,i wonder what they would describe life like in a Private Smallmine,lol.

There was a Pit closed in the North East at the time of the strike,cannot remember its name,now that was harsh,it had opened in the late 1700`s and was soaking wet,an haulier was shown on the news with his pony,drenched.

Regarding wet, my grandfather first worked underground in a small(ish) colliery that was very shallow and notoriously wet. Along with the other colliers he used to put a galvanized corrugated sheet on top of himself when undercutting by hand, to throw off the water entering through the roof. He moved to a larger, deeper, drier colliery but that improvement came at the price of numerous small explosions that gave the colliery a sufficiently bad reputation locally that, when he got married, his wife insisted he leave coal mining.

Interesting photos but I fail to see the "harsh reality" part of the statement.
Just a normal pit to me?

Les

Absolutely. I read 'Harsh' as a journalistic heads-up to a public who are now a generation removed from deep coal in the Northeast. There was nothing harsh about what I witnessed there; difficult, demanding, even dangerous at times, but not 'harsh' by any means in a modern, safety-conscious coal industry.

Harsh is more appropriate to the way successive governments of all persuasion have allowed the coal industry to wither and die, blighting the communities it once supported.

Its not all bad news though, as most of those jobs have been replaced by a minimum-wage low-skilled barely-literate workforce selling shite things we didn't make, on credit we can't afford. Or am I just being harsh?

MARK

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.....most of those jobs have been replaced by a minimum-wage low-skilled barely-literate workforce selling shite things we didn't make, on credit we can't afford.

MARK

....shite things (that we don't even need), that we didn't make, on credit we can't afford.....

:(

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