This was an email I recieved almost two years ago and it has quite a bit
of information, a first hand account, of the operation of this job.
CNIDR Isearch-cgi 1.20.06 (File: 246)
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Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 19:18:38 -0400
From: "robertdeeble" <robertdeeble(a)globalnetisp.net>
To: COALMINERS-L(a)rootsweb.com
Message-ID: <000701bff36a$02a34280$15d588cf@robertdeeble>
Subject: [C-M] Re: Stationary engine driver
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Hi, Coalminers list, I recieved this post from Dilys in
Essex. She is on the Glamorgan (Wales) list and I thought her descriptions
of her fathers work was too good not to pass along to this list.
Robert Deeble
Robert,
Thanks for your message. I'm pleased you enjoyed the story, and certainly,
you can send it on to wherever you wish.
It was my father, David John Isaac, known as Dai Isaac, who was the winder
(at a colliery on Tylacelyn Road, Penygraig) who let me down the pit
shaft;
he would trust no one else to do it.
Shortly after I enjoyed that unofficial trip down, it became disallowed
for
anyone other than working miners to go below. I was just so lucky.
Winders had to eat their meals in-situ. Food had to be taken in to them,
and
that was one of my jobs; a plate of hot food, on a heated plate,
with
another hot plate on top to keep it warm, and tied up securely in tea
towels. My little legs hot-footed it over all the short-cuts of the
ten-minute run to the engine house. This included running across the
slag-tip and skirting around treacherously narrow and shale-slippery
pathways made by the local sheep in the slag and small coal dumps, to
shorten the journey. Today, all that area is green; where the colliery/
feeders etc once stood, is now the Penygraig playing field.
My father's beverage was a bottle of cold, slightly sweetened, China tea,
which he swigged at throughout the hot, steamy shift. His light for
reading
between 'action', was a makeshift bulb rigged up behind him.
The whole
engine house was so massive that it was quite awesome. I always went in at
the back door; the nearest door at the end of my 'run'. Then I had to pass
the steam-belching pistons, which threw up clouds of breath-taking steam
through the holes and spaces around the engine's enormous metal inspection
covers on the floor. I always hoped he wouldn't be starting the engine
just
as I arrived, but it invariably happened that he did.
If I remember correctly, his weekly wage was £14.00. at the same time that
a
teachers pay worked out at £5. 00 a week. I believe that would have
been
in
about 1944-5.
His shift, again if I remember rightly, was 8 hours; long enough for such
a
great responsibilty. And 12 hours if two were sharing a shift for one
to
have the odd day off. We never went on holiday when I was a child, because
that would have been too heavy a burden for too long on the other two
winders. There were no relief winders then. And, of course, there was no
such thing as a weekend off!
When I took that trip down the shaft, I was struck by the inky blackness
surrounding me. Drops of water trickled through the ceiling, plopping with
an eerie, hollow sound into little pools on the ground. I don't know if it
was apprehension, fear of the unknown at being so far underground, or the
reality that existed there, but I shivered the whole time. I walked for
what
seemed miles, right into the level, finally arriving at the stables
where
the horses were. They were many, all well looked after, and treated
probably
with more care than the men enjoyed. I was as eager to get back to
the top
as I had previously been to go down.
In the bowels of the earth, the surrounding air smelled strange, and kind
of
went to my head, but I got used to it after a while. The fan engine
(another
I used to watch) sent down air to breathe. It was the enormous
beetles
that
lived down there which scared me more than the dark. They were huge,
long,
pale brown creatures; well fed, too, by the look of them.
The banksman who took me down was one Tommy Rogers. He 'lived' in a little
makeshift hut set just in front and to the side of the pitshaft, when he
was
on duty. From there, he gave bell signals to the winder on duty,
indicating
all was well to go down, or come up.
My father was one of a line of 'family' winders. His uncle was one, so was
my cousin, so was his father's brother, and my maternal grandfather's
brother, and so many more in the family that it would take up a whole page
to tell you the names of all of them.
My father's more direct ancestors were all masons, who came from
Carmarthenshire en bloc in the 19C to work at sinking the pits. Pits seams
ran for miles, criss-crossing the towns and villages where I lived. Nearly
every house suffered some subsidence as a result, some of the cracks in
the
walls being as wide as a quarter inch. When I would be dressed in
clean
clothes, my mother would tell me to be careful not to sit on windowsills,
because my dress would get black from coaldust. Clothes on the line would
be
soiled if left out to long - there was so much coaldust in the air. I
missed
the sound of the hooters when they finally stopped. This told me the
time;
one for 'get ready' the next hoot, 'come on, it's time'. It was a
lovely
sound that reverberated throughout the whole valley; except that later,
during the war, it meant - air raid - take cover.
My father used to talk about the Ely and Nantgwynn Collieries,
Williamstown,
Rhondda, where he once worked, but which had ceased working by the
time I
was born. However, I recollect going up to the feeders behind where the
Nantgwynne used to be. It was like a ghost town; huge wrecks of machinery
and buildings, and close by, a mountain top that issued sulpurous whorls
of
smoke from burning seams below ground. It was overpoweringly smelly,
but
fun
to play there, and collect tadpoles from the feeders. It was like
another
world, silent, empty, derelict, ghostly, but great fun for kids, even if
dangerous, to play amongst those ruins.
The engines in those old collieries were different, and my father was
fascinated with them as much as I with his giant.
He was a clever metal worker, and designed, and made from scrap brass on
his
metal lathe, scale models of these engines. My daughter today has
those
that
survived - about four I think. They were beautiful little things, and
all
working steam models, but I remember my mother selling some of them,
because, after my father finished work because of hypertension, money was
short, there being no pension at all from the colliery then.
The other thing I remember about my youth, is the sea of coal-blackened
faces bobbing up and down, all at once it seemed, as the colliers hurried
home up the long, Tylacelyn Hill in Penygraig after the end of a shift.
The
whites of their eyes were quite startling in those black faces, and
every
smile looked dazzling white. Each one hugged a sizeable log under his arm.
When the pit props were used or defective, they were sent to the top, and
sawn up for free firewood for the miners. I think we were allowed four
free
loads of coal a year, too.
In about 1870 plus, my maternal grandfather worked in a 2 and a half foot
water-filled seam in Treherbert, as a hard-heading cutter, by hand. The
money for working there was better paid than in the other levels, and he
was
saving to go to university at Cardiff. This he did, eventually
becoming
one
of the first batch of 60 students to enrol at Cardiff University in
the
1800's when it first opened.
There was a colliery strike at Treherbert, and so the villagers had no
money
even to buy bread. Grandpa handed them all his savings to buy food.
He
returned to the mine, when work restarted there, until he had again saved
enough to go back to university, finally becoming a much respected and
loved
reverend; be-it-all he was a descendant of Welsh buccaneers who
became
wealthy, Jamaican sugar plantation owners from 1665.
It seems strange to me that people today may not know all about this kind
of
life. All these ordinary (to me) experiences are locked away in my
mind. I
have so many memories I could fill a book.
Sincerely, Dilys, in Essex
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End of COALMINERS-D Digest V00 Issue #246
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