Sneyd Colliery Disaster

[heworksardtho]

80 years today since 57 miners lost their lives

[Veritas]

Important to remember things like this when people start shouting health & safety gone mad.

[felonious]

Jan 1, 2022 15:41:06 GMT heworksardtho said:

80 years today since 57 miners lost their lives

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneyd_Colliery_Disaster


Not long after the Minnie Pit disaster.

[misterj]

Men weren’t supposed to work that day but volunteered to help the war effort …… true heroes!

[lawrieleslie]

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[chuffedstokie]

Jan 6, 2022 10:45:57 GMT lawrieleslie said:

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Sombre reading.

[somersetstokie]

Not forgetting of course that in February 1881 there was a serious fire and explosion at Chatterley Whitfield colliery near Chell. The fire was caused by the misuse of an underground blacksmith’s furnace which resulted in an explosion, killing 24 men and boys.

Sadly such misfortunes were not uncommon in the mining industry and were a largeley unavoidable occupational hazard and fact of life for most mineworkers. This was a time also when "pots or pits" were the only realistic working options for most Stokies and they had no real choice but to put themselves in harms way.

[Eggybread]

My grandfather was overman at Florence colliery and was sent out to different pits around the north midlands and the north west. He was sent to Sneyd 12 months before the disaster and sent a report to his seniors that it was an unsafe and just a matter of time before something would happen. His recommendations were ignored/not dealt with soon enough.

[somersetstokie]

Mossfield Colliery, Near Caverswall, had two major disasters in its history.

In October 1889 there was a large underground explosion, probably due to a build up of gas in an unstable local environment, although the official cause was never identified. At the time of the explosion there were seventy-seven men in the two seams at the pit and sixty-four were killed and the sixteen horses in the mines were also killed.

On 21st. March, 1940, there was another parallel event at the mine. At 1.00 a.m. on Thursday 21st March in the third hour of the night shift, there was once again an explosion caused by the familiar problem of pockets of gas moving, and at the time there were 12 persons, including the fireman, at work in and near the pit face. All of them were killed or severely injured by the explosion and only one, the fireman survived.

[somersetstokie]

I would like to say that more should be done to recognise and commemorate the contribution of Coal, and the people who mined it, to the modern prosperity of Britain. Especially in Stoke which is still essentially a 19th century metropolis, whose heritage owes so much to the workings of the North Staffordshire Coalfield.

Coal may have had its day in Britain but without it most of our industrial heritage would not be there as an integral part of our history.

I have no particular agenda or political persuasion to push here, but I am an historian, and have a huge interest in the History of my Stoke origins. My Grandfather was a miner at Silverdale Colliery near Newcastle, and I myself have been down a mine at Chatterley Whitfield. So I am very much aware of the role that the pits played in our recent past.