This booklet collects together peoples memories and personal accounts of living and working in the Somerset Coalfield, and offers a fascinating insight into what life was like for the miners and their families in years gone by. One entry is detailed below to provide an idea of the sorts of details that are included:
As a child in the 1940s I lived at Haydon opposite- Kilmersdon Colliery which was the playground for myself and my friends! Days were spent sliding down the batches and searching for fossils on them, and playing in empty trucks! We also visited the pit ponies most days with titbits for them, and even now the smell of sawn wood takes me back to my days of playing in and around the sawmill. Another familiar place was the gravity incline watching the wagons go up and down. My father, Albert Perry, had been a miner since leaving school, until his retirement in the early 1960s. Prior to his leaving the Coal Board he helped operate the locomotive on the incline with Herbie Loader, and as it was one of the last working locomotives it was usual for it to be photographed by various visiting enthusiasts. My regret is that my father died very shortly after his retirement and I was unable to record his memories of a mining life, and those of my grandfather who worked at Lower Works.
The condition of the booklet is generally very good. The cover is clean and tidy, the staple spine is intact, and all pages are clean, intact, unblemished and tightly bound.
Miners and Mining: Memories of the The Somerset Coalfield
Published by Five Arches in 2003, 26 pages. A5 size slim booklet (N7725)