The Silent Kellingley Pit: How UK’s Final Coal Mine Went Dark

Comments · 41

• ME

  @MettleUK · 2 months ago · pinned

  The stories we tell here, written down properly. Read the first chapter free — no cost, no card: <a href="https://mettlehistory.co.uk/">https://mettlehistory.co.uk</a>

• MA

  @mattwalesy1 · 6 months ago

  My grandad worked at big K. We still have his lamp 😊

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• ED

  @EdenKrane · 4 months ago

  I once went down a pit (Westoe Pit, South Shields) in 1954 when a school friend got his miner dad to take us down, and out to the actual coal face. It was not only scary to go down, but our pit extended out below North Sea. I was fully aware of the dangerous situation, and glad to return to the surface. Mining was not a Romantic occupation. Most miners didn’t want their sons to follow their occupation. I do think, however, that miners were heroes. Sadly, the final days of the industry could have been handled differently. And without that megalomaniac Arthur Scargill.☹️☹️

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• FE

  @felixthecleaner8843 · 6 months ago

  A very interesting and powerful account of the coal industry. Well done and thank you!

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• GO

  @gooderspitman8052 · 4 months ago (edited)

  Had the mines stayed open, quite a lot of us, ‘myself included’ would be either dead, or incapacitated. Coal Mining wasn’t the rosey life that it’s made out to be, via nostalgia and brass bands, the money was good, but the work was very harsh and unhealthy. I know this for a fact, because, in another life I was a tailgate ripper. We sometimes drove the road ways through strata that was very saline, it burned any cuts or abrasions on your skin, we nicknamed it, dinosaur piss. 😂 And the village communities were united and often rather remote in their locations, making for easy access to the countryside, the coal board houses were cheap to rent and we got a coal allowance, too. <br>But apart from that, you were lucky if you retired and were not broken on the pit wheels of an unhealthy industry. The fact was this you did your coal face training and earned the top wages, but by the end of your career, and through ill health or injury, you ended up working on a conveyor button or belt cleaning, maybe even on the pit tip, but on lower wages. So like I say had the mines stayed open, I would probably not be alive now at seventy years old to write this comment, nor would a lot more men either.

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• AL

  @alexhayden2303 · 6 months ago

  A permit for a new deep mine in Cumbria, has been refused.

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• MA

  @marionbloom1218 · 6 months ago

  The plain fact is that nobody - government, companies or unions - can fight the inevitability of economic reality. &nbsp;You can&apos;t keep milking the tax-payer or consumer to support an industry that would never be able to break even due to the relatively high cost of UK deep mined coal compared to other alternative energy sources. &nbsp;The run-down had been happening for decades (railways dieselised to reduce costs, North Sea gas came along, much cheaper than coal gas for heating and cooking, chemical industries had turned to oil as feedstock to improve efficiency and reduce cost), so ultimate closure was inevitable. &nbsp;But Scargill made it much worse for everyone by leading the miners into a fight that they could not win, to service his own arrogance and sense of self importance. &nbsp;He had to show Thatcher who was boss. &nbsp;The miners were collateral damage in that fight, they suffered terrible hardships but you should know that Scargill didn&apos;t suffer - he finished his life still a wealthy man. &nbsp;Even after the strike collapsed, he still claimed to represent the miners - any honourable man would have &quot;fallen on his sword&quot; having cost the miners and their families so dearly for so little.<br><br>But there is another very significant factor which you had not mentioned, in the death of UK coal mining, which is sulphur. &nbsp;I was working in the power industry through those years and I can tell you all about it. &nbsp; In the 70&apos;s and 80&apos;s, forests all over Europe were dying due to acid rain. &nbsp;Much of this was traced to SOx emissions from UK power stations, burning UK coal which is mostly high in sulphur. &nbsp;We could not keep on killing those forests in other countries, it was threatening their tourism and paper industries especially in Germany and Sweden. &nbsp;Out of studies and international negotiations came an agreement that the UK would reduce its sulphur emissions. &nbsp;Several stations were fitted with Flue Gas Desulphuristion (FGD) plants, which did the job. &nbsp;However, the FGD plant used 15% of the power output of the station, plus you had to quarry and crush a thousand tonnes a day of limestone to feed them, and get rid of a larger quantity of gypsum produced. &nbsp;This was an enormous additional cost to put onto electricity consumers.<br><br>By comparison, you could purchase low-sulphur coals from Colombia, Russia and Australia, and burn those without having to run the FGD plant. &nbsp;Coal import facilities were limited at the time, so the electricity generators invested in new terminals at Liverpool, Port of Tyne, Immingham, Bristol and others (I worked on the Bristol Coal Terminal project). &nbsp;So as well as the inherently cheaper extraction by open-cast mining in those countries, the avoidance of having to build more FGD plants and the huge cost of running them, could be avoided. &nbsp;<br><br>It was simply a no-brainer. &nbsp;The idea that you could have just mandated the use of expensive deep mined UK coal and stick the costs of the higher coal price and the FGD costs to the electricity consumer or the taxpayer, is absurd. &nbsp;Other sources of energy would be cheaper (oil, gas, nuclear). &nbsp;And making energy more expensive just hurts people and industry in other places, it&apos;s a no-win situation.<br><br>So in the end, it was sulphur that contributed greatly to the final end of UK coal mining.<br><br>Now of course coal is gone from the UK altogether, for good reasons - currently I&apos;m working on a project to repurpose the Bristol Coal Terminal for other uses - &nbsp;but that is another story.<br><br>Marion

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• RY

  @Ryan-lz4qh · 6 months ago

  ❤😂🎉<br>Gday mate <br>I’m from a small town in New South Wales Australia <br>The town is called Lithgow and &nbsp;at one point was the life line to the rest of the new form continent <br>Almost 150 +years in coal &nbsp;mining <br>It was a bleak and dirty place that was stripped of its coal heritage <br>Also its coke production period is an interesting story as it now resides in port Kembla nsw and has original buildings and signage from Lithgow

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• DA

  @davesmith2295 · 6 months ago (edited)

  Error with the wrong image (Arthur Scargill) shown @<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac0YP-91ouY&amp;t=770">12:50</a>.<br>I bekieve the image here is Joe Gormley his predecessor.

• TI

  @TimSugden-g7l · 5 months ago

  My great uncle was lord Taylor he was a miner from Darbyshire is book is up hill all the way

• BI

  @biggedybiggedybong8032 · 6 months ago

  Used to sweep n gulley clean at Big K..hated the place

• JA

  @jasinere35 · 6 months ago (edited)

  loosely using the word &quot;imagine&quot; i can tell you that the only thing you heard from kellingley was the siren letting everyone know the cage was in transit you couldnt hear the winder, the canal ran right along side of kellingley &amp; you were able to walk the towpath past it, with the motor &nbsp;sitting way above head height &amp; behind cladding it was practically quiet btw thoresby closed before hatfield &amp; hatfield headframes still stand today unlike kellingley &amp; thoresby whos sites are now housing &amp; an industrial park, the yorkshire locals fought to keep hatfield as a monument &amp; won so thats one colliery thats still standing along with it now a listed building, the whole history you got correct but the fall of the miners was one mans undoing scargil if he had gone with kinnocks idea the pits would have lasted a lot longer besides if the from what you said in the vid the collieries were nationalised it means the government have no power in shutting them so instead of closing they should have kept working in defiance of the governments descision, my last relationship was with a miners daughter &amp; the collery he worked at was brodsworth 1984-5 they too were part of the strike its sad to see that it too succumed to the closures dont know the year i just told of the shananagans they got upto underground &amp; during the strike of how hard it was for them that year to survive

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