Post, Rain, Coal Mines,

 

 

The weathermen said 'Rain in afternoon.'  "Good!" said I, and before noon wandered down to the Post Office with my two packets.  The sun shone the sky was blue, it was even warm on the far side of the street, so I crossed over, slowly these days annoying the motorists, and wandered happily into the shop.  I was in so quick I forgot to put on my mask and risked a £100 fine.  I told the sweet Asian lass at the counter (I only go there because she always smiles at me) I was Boris Johnson's dad, so she let me off.  £2:14 paid, change pocketed, xerox paper bought, I was down to my last sheet, and off I went back home.  Naturally the sun had gone, the sky was dark gray, the rain hammered down, and I was fair drookit by the time I got home.  I am still wet now, my hair cold and clammy.  Was the cloud waiting for me?  Could it be the BBC had got it wrong?  Before noon and the rain was falling, now, after one pm the sun is out again and I am still cold!  It is a good job I am not one to complain, that's all I can say.

 

I just typed in 'Freefotos rain' on 'images' and found many excellent free fotos.  At least they appear free and I am making use of them.  Very useful when you do not get out as much as you would like. I had to get out this morning to post the family details I had been looking into.  My mothers side were all miners from Fife, and it appears that between the early 1600s and almost 1800, some say much later, miners were enslaved to the Lairds who ran the mines.  Coal being important, using trees for firewood banned, the Lairds ensured worers were available for this horrid, hard, dirty, dangerous work by passing laws forcing them, and their descendents, to work for them in their mines.  Moving location was outlawed, wages low, danger to life high.  Add to this small cottages, not always healthy, poor diet, no NHS, and lots of children, it can be seen that attitudes towards coal owners would not be based on love!  

I note that not only do my forefathers first appear in the East Neuk of Fifearound 1620 but they marry people who also cannot move on.  This does not help chasing up relatives, especially with the Scots habit of giving one child grandad's name.  So we have Colin and Robert repeated endlessly over generations, not helped by other family lines doing similar.  The Scottish Mining Website gives details of many accidents, about 5 deaths a month in Scots pits, during the 19th century alone.  The uncles I knew in Cowdenbeath, realeased from slavery by their time, would not allow their sons to go through what they endured.  All got apprentiships somewhere else. 

My grandfather had 11 children.  Two died early, and he went through 3 wives to get them, they too died early.  Not unusual in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  On those few occasions I have had to work physically hard I see it bears no relation to men working with pick and shovel down a mine in which the coal face may be less than 2 feet high!  The dust, physical difficulty, bad, uncaring management, and low wage makes it difficult for me to complain at the work I have been involved with.  

My mother had a story concerning a family member, possibly a brother of my granddad, who became a manager in a pit.  The family cut him off as if he had died!  This was a crossing over to the other side that could not be forgiven, and never was.

 

Railways, a Book and a Trip

 

Amazon 

I have just finished reading ‘Eleven Minutes Late,’ by Matthew Engel, an excellent but rather ungainly titled book on UK’s beloved railways. ‘Beloved’ is the word I used but we must remember there are commuters who may disagree somewhat with that term.  This is not a book full of technical details, I would be dumb before it if it was, but an enjoyable romp through the growth off and present state of the railways in the UK today, well, in 2009 when the book was published.  

This brought to mind all the memories of good days on the railways, back into the nostalgia of the days of steam.  Obviously, none of my readers will be old enough to remember that grime filled time period.

Entering into the glass covered yet somewhat dim Waverley station via the long slow ramp, taxis lined up at the side, or by the wind-swept steps off Princes Street was always a pleasure, it still is!  Possibly it was dim in my memory because we usually travelled early in an Edinburgh July!  The confined spaces, taxis and cars passing by, people crowding John Menzies bookstall, crowds of people confused as to their platform, as indeed we were, possibly it is just my memory. 

Dad would make for the wooden ticket office in the centre of the station, a marvellously decorated hall, leaning down to the ridiculous small window from which tickets were dispensed at that time.  As kids we were just excited to be heading for Cowdenbeath or Dunfermline for a summer holiday glad to be out of school and in an adventure. 

Ah family, living off them is such fun, at least for us.  As I remember it my aunts and uncles then were all marvellous and quite used to children in the house.  Many had passed this way before us.  

After much fuss at Waverley we would head for Platform 18 where we approached the dark maroon carriages of British Railways.  How old were they I wonder?  Corridor trains that possibly came in to service before the war?  On occasion I would ask about the man in the blue, dingy oil covered uniform, to be informed he had been ‘under the train.’  This was a concept that intrigued someone well under 10 years of age.  The idea of crawling about under the train intrigued.  Had it been possible I would have ventured down myself to have a look.  This was not however encouraged.  These men were merely the crew ensure oil levels were correct, all moving parts greased to the driver’s satisfaction before leaving thus ensuring the dingy black engine would reach the final destination without hitch. 

I did not realise that such engines were no longer maintained to their best condition, the policy was to just keep them moving for a few years before diesel, the answer to all rail problems, would begin.

Another flawed railway policy.    

Inside we settled into a compartment, much to the delight of those who had got in previously who now contemplated the delights of travel with children!  Today I feel for those people.  

I would be entranced by the ridiculous system for opening the window on the doors, all leather strap and strength, however they usually remained shut, the small window of the compartment itself was half open, to allow air to enter and steam and grit to remain outside.  Some preferred sitting with their back to the engine to avoid such intrusions. 

The pictures above the seats, aged prints of highland glens, lochs and other delights unknown to those from Edinburgh’s corporation housing estates, sat next to the dim lights covered by even dimmer lampshades.  Switching them on made the compartment even dimmer still. 

On occasion a jolt would tell us the engine had taken its place at the front and soon we would be off.  

There is little to compare with the noise of an engine, whatever size, chuff, chuffing its way out of a station.  People who dislike train travel who come across such an event will be unable to pass without watching as the iron monster belches out steam from far too many parts and slowly noises its way up the track.

The leaving of Edinburgh heading west or north takes the train through the garden’s underneath Edinburgh castle high above.  Those sunbathing, for a few weeks of the year only, would watch the clouds of white steam rise as each train puffed its way along.  Then would come the short, dark, tunnels, always an engine driver’s delight as he was engulfed in the steam alongside any watery drips falling from above, tunnels always have drips falling from above.  The two dark tunnels, lit by dim lights at regular intervals, wound under Edinburgh taking us quickly to Haymarket station where the populace filled the time while waiting for their train by discussing the latest design for renovation of the site above. 

They are still discussing this today!

Trips in the sun by steam train were always special for a child.  He has no understanding of the problems around him, except the shortage of sweets to gobble on the way.  He does not comprehend the effort of the fireman stoking tons of coal into the fire, expertly keeping the pressure correct enabling the driver to work the steam power.  Real men’s work in those days. Today, some lines that run occasional steam trains often have two firemen to fire the boiler.  Even these men are not strong enough to work single handed on some tough lines as in the days of steam.  Just how strong was a fireman on any such engine?

The railway headed west until the outer reaches of Edinburgh, soon after turning towards the north, leaving the main line to run on towards Glasgow, we looked for the lights at Turnhouse airport, always hoping unsuccessfully to see aircraft come and go, very different today of course.  Fields full of green crops, sheep or indifferent cattle passed by and usually without stopping at Dalmeny we raced over the vast cantilever bridge that crosses the Firth of Forth.  

 

The ‘Forth Bridge,’ never to be called the ‘Forth Rail Bridge’ by anyone born within Scotland, is one of Scotland’s greatest feats of engineering.  Of course, few Scots actually built it, but we will ignore that little problem.  Erected in such a manner as to ensure it would not collapse in a storm as had the Tay Bridge not long before when the centre girders collapsed in a violent storm taking a train and its contents with it.  The engineers were not going to risk that and so far no storm has endangered the bridge.  The only danger came from down south when a proposal to close the bridge to save the cost of painting it constantly. Typical southern thoughts.  Now, to save money, the bridge wears a new coat of paint that will last 25 years – they say! 

From the bridge we would look down on many light blueish grey Royal Navy ships lined up on both sides of the Forth, part of the fleet based at Rosyth.  Further upriver at Grangemouth more blue grey ships were based, and under the centre of the bridge on Inchgarvie fortifications that once defended the port lay deserted but enticing to every young lad on the train high above.

The rocky outcrop at North Queensferry soon opens up on the right-hand side of the train to a view of the bay beyond.  Here, throughout the 50s and well into the 60’s it was possible to see the shipbreaker's yard.  Always two large ex-Royal Navy ships lay together, large chunks cut out as Britain’s huge war effort was diminished to fit in with her more realistic political position.  Navy ships no longer stand there but the yard still exists, work permitting.

Then it is on past Inverkeithing, slamming doors, cries from the porters, sailors abounding leaving and arriving, and onwards into Fife.  Again, fields of cattle and sheep, many gardens featuring huts that once were railway trucks, a sight rarely seen today.  How long these had been in situ it was difficult to tell, nor was it asked how they had got there.  Also no longer seen was the use made of the land at the side of the tracks.  On many occasion vegetable gardens were seen at the end of small gardens attached to smaller houses. Possibly some of these had been installed during the war and remained until much later British Rail little Hitler’s arrived to end the practice.

Today the view from the train contains more houses than sheep, more roads and cars than cattle, this is in my view, last noted some years ago, less interesting.  Progress I suppose.

The station at Dunfermline Lower was a magnificent building according to my memory, today the Edinburgh platform has seen the waiting rooms and covering shed demolished and replaced by a Scotrail bus shelter.  I hope that has improved since my last visit.  Dunfermline ‘Upper’ has long gone along with the engine sheds and sidings that once sent the clang, clang, clang of railway wagons being shunted across the night sky.  Now recently built overpriced houses fill the space, the only clang coming from pots and pans wives and girlfriends pass over their man’s head.  

 Canmore

Our journey ended at Cowdenbeath, once the ‘Chicago of Fife,’ the centre of the Fife coalfields and home to several coal pits.  In 1851around one thousand souls worked the land around Beath Church, Iron Ore and then Coal were found and by 1914 25,000 folks lived there, most worked the mines.

The house now lived in by my mother’s eldest sister was also the miner’s cottage where they were all born.  Granddad had managed to get through three wives and ten children, only one child of whom did not survive. That meant after my grandmother died, in childbirth like the others, granddad had a two roomed house, a kitchen attached at the rear with a tap, an outside toilet and nine children!  Not uncommon for the time, my mother was born in 1915.

The ground behind the house sloped downwards towards the large football ground.  This was built so large as the expectation as for the town to continue growing.  It is claimed some 70,000 could fit in when completed!  Not now!

Next to the football ground entrance stood Pit No 7.  Here my granddad and his sons all found work.  There was no other.  For generations the family had been miners, coal being found in the 1500s in Fife, and they were to be the last generation of miners.  All the boy’s sons were forced to learn a trade, none were allowed to endure what these men had to endure for 50 years!

Behind the house, we rarely went out the front onto the street, lay the path up to the bridge we crossed as we came in.  From here we looked down the embankment at the constant flurry of railway life passing by.  Trains running from Aberdeen to London perhaps, fish trains also passing, leaving behind a stink, many long coal trains, heavy wagons with no brakes, controlled by a guard at the rear, local passenger services running around Fife, goods trains abounded and we waved at each one and never failed to get a response. 

Today there is a much-improved rail service for commuters.  For a while it was pretty dingy.  Many complaints can be heard but few can complain about the view, either from the crossing of the Firth of Forth or the many scenic views when running along the coast towards Kirkcaldy.  Fife is worth looking at, even if they say “If ye sup wi a Fifer, do it with a lang spoon.”

Cowdenbeath and the Black Diamonds

Fife-Scotland

Around about 1967 time I passed through a small town in Fife by bus, while visiting relatives there. Through the smeared bus window I saw a group of retired men waiting at the bus stop opposite. Sunday best suits, three piece and with watch chain hanging from the waistcoat pocket, best flat caps, shoes polished, and under female orders to "Behave yourself!"  Most notable however was the fact that none of them were standing up, they were all crouched down, as if dodging a sniper in the houses behind them.  These were retired miners.   Men who had worked down the pit since boyhood, probably beginning as 13 year old boys during the Great War,  and progressing to the pit face, digging for coal with pick and shovel in tunnels so low that they could not stand upright.  This meant that stopping for their 'piece,'  they had to crouch.   Now here they were, all well passed retirement age, more comfortable crouching than standing for any period of time.

All my uncles in the Kingdom of Fife worked down the pit, they had to, there was nothing else!  Like those men at the bus stop, probably they would have known some of them, from the time of the first world war they joined their dads and uncles, being 'Knocked up' at five in the morning to walk down to the mine for a shift.  When they got to the coal face the pick and shovel method was used to cut the coal,  often lying on their side in a seam two feet high,  then piling the hewn coal into the 'Hutch,' a small, wheeled truck, that was tagged with their name and sent by human means or pit pony, to the top.  Those two or feet high shafts would contain a straining miner in a badly lit, dust filled, dangerous workplace.  Before lamps there would be candles, and possibly a canary or two as a warning for gas.  Some miners preferred rats for this as they were quicker to warn of any build up of gas down the pit.  

These coal seams would be 70 - 100 fathoms or more deep into the ground. (approx. 6 feet to a fathom).  To get there a slow ride on a lift, and then a walk, possibly of some miles to the pit face.    As a miner entered the cage for the rickety journey down he handed over his token.   This token identified him by his number and the pit number also, and indicated he had gone down the mine. This was used in case of accidents to keep track of missing men.  Even when mines operated in recent days accidents were possible and occasionally a small fall of rock may trap one miner or more.  It was also imperative to keep down coal dust by spraying it constantly as any explosion, usually caused by methane gas, would cause this dust to ignite. Smoking also was banned and only a fool would attempt this. In the late 50's several were killed in one mine and the reason, disowned by the union, but clearly identified, was a miner who had been found with cigarettes and matches on his body after an explosion.  Several were killed that day.   Smoking was never allowed underground and ought to have been handed over for safe keeping as he entered the cage.  There had been a collapse at one mine not from from where my mother was born killing several men as the earth caved in upon them, and there was always the danger caused by a runaway 'hutch,' one of which killed a man at the 'Moss-side' pit the day of my mothers birth in 1915.  In 1974 when working in the infirmary we had three miners brought in and different times that year with injuries caused by small accidents.  A wagon toppled over on one, the roof collapsed on another, small individual situations, and this in a modern mine in operation until Thatcher closed it down.  Imagine the conditions in the 20's?  Death or injury was a part of life to the miner. 

Pit No.7 Token

The Kingdom of Fife has many attractive little fishing villages adorning the coast.  Towards the North East we find the ancient University town of St Andrews and alongside we find the world famous golf course that is indeed the home of golf.  Falkland Palace was once home to the great of the land, and Culross (pronounced Kooross) on the Firth of Forth is considered one of the most attractive ancient wee towns in the nation. Under the town, and indeed the central region of Fife lay 'black diamonds,' coal!  During the nineteenth century the mainly agricultural rural scene was to become transformed, and not much beautified, by the rush to dig for those 'black diamonds.'

It was under Culross much earlier than the nineteenth century that mining for coal began. People had been using the black stones found on the south coast of Fife for some time but when there was a shortage of wood in the sixteen hundreds that other sources of fuel were required.  Then a man of brilliance, a Scot naturally, began to mine coal in an industrial fashion. The trees were required for ships, both military and merchant, house building and other uses requiring wood, and it was this that caused  Sir George Bruce  to take action.  Having been born nearby the Forth he well knew of the availability of coal and late in the 16th century he began to tunnel down beneath the Firth of Forth in an effort to obtain his prize.  The shaft extended well under the Firth and over two hundred feet offshore he then built a shaft down through the water and into the coal seam.  This allowed air into the mine and by an ingenious use of a horse powered lift he raised the coal above the sea and loaded it straight onto ships. When King James the VI visited in 1617 he was astonished as he looked up the vent taking coal up to top, that the water was above him!  He began to believe he had been brought down there to be killed (Kings are always somewhat paranoid about this) and it was Sir George who calmed him by pointing out the boat and indicating he could return that way or by walking back up the tunnel shaft.  James wisely took the boat!

Sir George's Big Hoose

However successful this operation it was the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century when coal mining arrived in Fife big time.  In their search for iron ore the 'Oakley Iron Company' came to the vicinity of Cowdenbeath and discovered more coal than iron ore.  Almost overnight it appears pits (the mine is always called a 'Pit,' in Scotland) were sunk. The sleepy farms of the area which had for many years been slowly evolving into a single village, began to turn into a bustling coal town!  Instead of drudgery for little pay as a farm labourer many turned to the drudgery underground for higher pay, with much more danger.  The population, probably less than two hundred in 1800, reached around eight thousand by the end of the century!   By nineteen fifteen, when my mother entered the world there, the population was nearer twenty five thousand!  With a growing population arriving to seek work in the thirty or so pits in the area, plus the subsidiary work which follows, the town became known as the 'Chicago of Fife!'  Indeed it can be quite windy in Fife also.

Winding Gear Pit No.7.

Home life was not without problems also for the miner at the turn of the century. Families were often large and childbirth was an unhealthy experience for many women.  My Grandfather moved to Cowdenbeath because work was available 'down the pit.'  He had three wives in his life.  His first gave birth to two girls who lived well into their eighties, and two boys both of whom died within a year.  She died in childbirth herself.  The second died a month after the birth of her third child and the last, my grandmother, lasted four months after the birth of her fourth.  Three wives and nine children!  Typical of Scots working class life at the turn of the century.  To be honest large families were found in all classes,  Queen Victoria herself had nine!  The death of wives in labour and children, the child usually before five years of age, was a regular occurrence in the UK well into the twentieth century.  Cemeteries give an indication of the number of the 'better off' who died young, how many of the 'Lower orders' suffered this way?  Indeed only the introduction of the NHS ended the insufficiency of medical aid at childbirth, and as one of my nieces could tell you even today that can be a hazardous event.

My Grandfather and all his sons went 'down the pit.' There was no other choice! At one time or another they all worked at Pit No 7 which stood at the bottom of the slope from Chapel Street where their two roomed miners cottage lay.  Just imagine ten people living in two rooms!  There was no showers at the mines in those days and when the men came home from work they washed in a bath in front of the fire, slowly heated, or more usually, at the sink where someone, usually their sisters, would rub their backs clean for them.   I think I am right in saying the bath was only added after the war!

The working and living conditions increased peoples desire for a better environment to live and work in. Cowdenbeath soon became a centre of both the Independent Labour Party  and the Communist Party, indeed the town chose Willie Gallagher, a Communist, as their MP and sent him off to the House of Commons!  Later Jennie Lee of the ILP made it to Edinburgh University and became a member of Harold Wilson's Labour government in 1964. She also managed to marry Aneurin Bevan, the man responsible for the introduction of the NHS, and  she herself was influential in the creation of the 'Open University.'

The General Strike of 1926 hit Cowdenbeath badly. For six months the town remained on strike for better pay. Just imagine the suffering for an entire town, a suffering repeated in all mining districts throughout the UK that year.  For over a week all other unions offered support but soon this petered out the miners were alone.  This was not a strike based on greed, it was for a decent, indeed 'living wage!'  The mine owners were incredibly greedy, selfish men.  When some claimed the miners were 'revolutionaries' King George V himself suggested people try living on the miners wage before saying such things.  Winston Churchill, hated to this day by miners who felt he broke the strike, in fact wanted to give them satisfaction!  He quickly came to hate and despise the mine owners for their selfish attitude and went so far as to suggest nationalising the mines!  This however was not possible for a Conservative government, Churchill did not forget the mine owners attitude and in 1950 when he returned to power he made no effort to scrap the now nationalised mines.  Protests at the treatment of the miners by the owners, their conditions and dangers, ran on for many years.  This often caused riots in Cowdenbeath's High Street.  Many's a head was broken by a police force sent in by a right wing government to end the dangers of 'socialism.'  The conditions were never mentioned.
  
The shared sufferings among miners produced a shared care.  Down a mine if an incident arises, possibly a fall of coal, or an accident, the nearest man will be the first into action to help you.  It does not matter if he is your greatest enemy, if there is a problem he will reach out to you, and you will reach out to him. That is just how it is.  Agape in action, although they probably would not know this.  As a child I always enjoyed the miners company, although the last pit closed in 1960 before I ever got the chance to go down and look around.  I think I would have been terrified to work down there, even when the conditions were much safer in the fifties.  It is noticeable that men of the day made it clear to their sons that they had to get a trade of some kind to avoid working down below. None of my cousins went down the pit, all learned a trade and 'bettered themselves.'  One who did likewise was Sir James Whyte Black.  Though born in Lanarkshire to a mining engineer he was reared at  Cowdenbeath and attended 'Beath High School.'  From there this promising young man went on to St Andrews University Medical School, then to Dundee, and his studies later enabled him to produce what is now known as the 'Beta Blocker.'

Dennis Canavan and Harry Ewing both became members of parliament, and Jim Baxter was to become one of the most gifted footballers Scotland has ever produced. Baxter earned fame for his passing ability, his ability to drink himself unconscious on a Friday before a match and still outplay everyone, and playing 'Keepie uppie' with the ball while making a fool of an England side that claimed (wrongly) the title 'World Champions' in 1967. It is clear that he was talented, it was also clear he was not the brightest!  The school itself had to be replaced as by the time these pupils attended the ground floor had sunk deep into the ground!  Subsidence caused by mine working beneath gave the school a basement!  Houses in the town were seen to lean to one side, and trains moved at a snails place while the mines operated.  In spite of all this a long list of pupils left that school in a mining backwater and rose to the highest office worldwide both in politics and business.  

The Pug

By 1960 Pit No 7 had closed. The coal rush was at an end.  No more would the 'pug' pull the coal wagons across the Main Street to the marshalling yards, an event I can remember watching at least once, no more will the miners get knocked up at five in the morning to waken them for a day's work, and no more (we hope) will the mine workings produce subsidence in all the wrong places!   Many talk romantically of the miners of past days.  There were many good people there.  No person should ever go through the difficulties the miners endured in the first half of the twentieth century again.  Be romantic about the men and women who lived there indeed, just don't let it happen again.

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