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 I started work at Silverwood pit in the summer of
1973 at the age of 17 as an apprentice electrician, and although I left in
1980 I still have a few fond memories of my time there.
After a few weeks at Manvers training centre, my first day at Silverwood was
in the surface fitting shop with a young fitter called Collin Newey, he had
a job to do at the top of west pit headgear, and asked if I wanted to join
him, so off I went.
The headgear was the huge structure that towered over the shaft, and
supported two giant 22 ft diameter pulleys. These pulleys guided the steel
ropes that were attached to the cages that went up and down the shaft.
There was a steel stepladder with a handrail on either side going up one of
the sloping legs of the headgear all the way to the top. I had no problem
getting up it was only when I got to the top that I realised I had vertigo!
I had seen these pulleys from a distance on many occasions they were after
all local landmarks, but now I was just a few inches away from them. My
heart started to beat even faster when the pulleys started turning. Within a
few seconds they were running at full speed apart from a few creaks they
were almost silent.
It wasn’t long before Collin finished the job, it was when he saw me
clinging to the rails that he must have noticed I was terrified. “Calm down”
he said “ there is another way down”. I started to feel a bit better then,
but on looking round could not see any escalator or lift shaft, and wondered
what he meant. He pointed to one of the ropes.
“Grab hold of that and it will lower you towards the engine house, when you
get close to the ground just let go” he said jokingly. This was my first
experience of mining humour; it wasn’t to be my last. Collin went down the
steps as if it was a carpeted staircase leaving me at the top. I eventually
sat on the top step and came down one step at a time on my bum. Needless to
say I never went up there again.
I spent the early part of 1974 in full time education at Mexborough tech
.The miners were on strike at the time, but the national union of
mineworkers insisted that apprentices did not interrupt their training so we
were forced to carry on working.
When I came back to Silverwood later that year I went to work in the surface
electric shop where I met electricians Albert Green and Ray Pell. Within a
few minutes of arriving I was taught the most important job of all, how to
make a perfect cup of tea.
It was then my responsibility to make sure that the kettle was full of
water, plugged in and switched on 20 minutes before snap time. The kettle
was so big it took almost 20 minutes to boil. You didn’t need to look at a
watch to know when it was snap time as the electrician’s labourer Albert
Sutcliffe would come up a spiral staircase from the cellar and shout at the
top of his voice. “Snap time, get yer mashings in”. This was my signal to
make the tea for Albert, Ray and yours truly of course. Everyone else could
make their own tea. We would all then go in to the snap cabin, this
was a brick built room in one corner of the shop with a huge table the size
of a billiard table in it. There would be about a dozen or so men eating
snap in there. Although most of the men were smokers it was considered the
height of rudeness to light up a cigarette whilst anyone was still eating, I
remember one occasion when a young lad did. Steve Ball an electrician had
not finished his snap when the young lad, whose name I can't remember lit up
a cigarette, Steve immediately came out with the wise crack. “Is it ok if I
eat my sandwich whilst you smoke” The lad not realising this was sarcasm
just replied “yeh”. A few moments later Steve finished his snap, and
was putting his snap tin back in his bag, he was fidgeting with it for ages,
I was unaware that he was also manoeuvring his buttocks towards the young
lads face, and then at just the right moment he broke wind. No one said a
word, although there were a few giggles. The young lad certainly got the
message, and always waited for everyone to finish his snap before lighting
up.
I also remember being sent to the stores for a long
stand. So off I went and asked Stan the store man for a long stand. About 20
minutes later Stan asked,” Have you stood there long enough? I didn’t twig
on immediately, so another 20 minutes passed before he asked me the same
question. It was then I realised it was a joke. I did only fall for it once,
even though attempts were made to send me for a left handed spirit level
bubble, and a pound of initiative.
Before I could go underground at Silverwood I had to do 4 weeks underground
training at Manvers. This took pace in the Melton field seam, which was
used for training purposes only. When the cage stopped at the Melton field
seam it was only a few hundred yards below ground, with about half a mile of
shaft still below us. The instructor would stride into the roadway, turn on
the lights and lower the kepps. This was like a bridge that was connected to
the shaft side and came over on to the cage so that we could walk into the
roadway without falling down the shaft. The training itself was mainly
safety and awareness, but we had to work on some of the haulage systems. I
remember the dreaded endless haulage, so called because it was continuous
steel rope running along a rail track down the roadway, round a return
wheel, back up the other side and connected to a stationary compressed air
haulage engine.
The first thing we were told about any haulage system, was never to stand
astride the rope as when the engine starts the ropes have a tendency to whip
up towards the roof, and if you were stood over it at the time you could say
goodbye to ever fathering a child.
Our task was to couple and uncouple tubs to the rope. Tubs are a term used
for mini wagons that carried coal before the advent of conveyer belts. The
rope would be running at a few miles per hour, and the tub would be
stationary on the rails, there was a bracket connected to the tub and
sitting on the rope, this bracket had a wheel on it that looked like a spur
on a cowboy boot, it was called a star clip. The idea was to whack the star
clip with a steel baseball bat and this would clamp the bracket to the rope
and the tub would begin to move. Sounds simple eh. Well I just couldn’t get
the hang of it. We had been split into 2 groups there was a team connecting
the tubs on one part of the roadway, I was with the uncoupling team a bit
further up the roadway.
I had stood and watched the other lads perform the operation with
perfection, one great whack on the star clip as the tub went by and the tub
came to a halt. Now it was my turn. The tub came towards me, I allowed it to
pass, then I whacked down and totally missed the star clip, hit the rope
instead, whack again, this time I hit the bracket. Whack, whack, whack,
still missed, so much so we had to do an emergency stop on the rope,
otherwise the tub would have ran into the buffers. The whole thing was set
up again a few times before I finally did it. The tub went passed me, but
this time instead of whacking down on it .i gently tapped the star clip, and
the tub came to a halt to tremendous applause and cheers, I felt as if I had
just scored the winning goal for England. That was the end of the shift, and
we made our way back to the shaft side were the cage was waiting for us. The
last man on the cage was the instructor who turned the lights off, retracted
the kepps , and strode onto the cage. Because no one was left to operate the
signals for the cage, a signal had to be sent to the banks man listening at
the top of the shaft. Striking the side of the cage with a piece metal
making a horrendous noise did this. Three bongs followed by one bong was the
signal to raise the cage, the banks man would then signal to the engine
house, and the cage was raised to the surface. We all had a well deserved
shower, and changed into clean clothes I was the last man out of the baths,
and had to hurry to board the mini bus that was waiting to take us back to
Silverwood. The rest of the lads were already on board. I remember Garry
Carter shouting “Come on star clips my dinner will be getting cold”. It was
then I realised the nickname star clips was going to be with me for
sometime. I haven’t seen Garry Carter for over 27 years, but if I saw him
tomorrow I’m sure he would say, “Hi star clips how’s it going”.
© Stephen Marshall 2007
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1900 - 1994
