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Azzabuv

This message was updated on 9/17/2005 6:52:18 PM by Azzabuv

Sye Lane Pit
replied on: 9/17/2005 6:47:09 PM

The following extract is taken from the Society's Newsletter, number 16, of May, 1974.
It is interesting in the fact that the article includes a few old Heanor names and occupations.

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Early Days of Mr. J. Brough employed at Bailey Brook Colliery as a blacksmith during the early part of this century.
I started work at Sye Lane Pit when i was ten years old. Mr. West was the Gaffer and he lived in the house at Sukey's Hole. I worked as a donkey driver, ganging coal; only donkeys were used in the pit and they were taken in and out every day.
All damaged harness had to be carried to Mr. Fines, who had a saddler's shop at the bottom of Mount Street.

The Waterloo coal was worked here and the depths of the shafts was approximately 50 yards. The Pit stood where the Hospital is now built and the Sukey's Hole Pond was the pit pond used for drainage and for steam raising.
There was a ropeway running down the valley, conveying coal in tubs to the Catnob at Langley, where it was sold locally, or loaded onto carts and taken to the wharf at Langley Mill.
I worked there until i was 14, when the pit closed. I used to fetch candles which were used in the pit, from Sam Flint's at the back of the *'King of Prussia'*, who made them out of mutton fat.
The pit was ventilated by a huge fire in the pit bottom. In the Winter, i never saw daylight, only on Sunday. We started work at six in the morning and finished at five or six at night, for which i was paid *2/6* or *3/-* a week.

After i left West's pit, i worked at Awsworth Pit, locally known as 'Bod Tod', which was owned first by Bennerley Ironworks and then by the Bestwood Company.
This pit worked three seams of coal: Low Main, Black Shale and Kilburn. The Low Main and Kilburn produced very good coking coals and even then, in the 1890s, all the coal was cut by compressed-air driven disc and bar coalcutters and all the underground haulage was also driven by compressed air. They had also experimented with a 'Blacket Chain Conveyor'.

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*2/6 = 12 and a half p. *3/- = 15p.
*King of Prussia* is the 'Market Hotel' today.
Azzabuv.

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