Churning: 18 April 1918

(For Charles Henry Brearley of Manor Farm, Cridling Stubbs)

The sun rises unrefreshed

Breaking fast the Brearleys

press on

Offensive wind monsters the cracked gaze

of the dairy window

The cream doesn't want to churn

With her back to the wall

at the front, Gladys struggles

to soldier

Miss Wiles wanders Wordsworth

whilst Gladys wonders

Why would the cream not churn?

Harold inspects the beasts

fodders foldyard tumbrel

and hunkers down

with drinkings in New Spring ditch

to dream on

The Peace when cream will churn

George, Mr Brearley scours flesh from fresh

Leeds Intelligencer

Lobs bone at supine Rex 

Lumbers

to order the absent lad's horses

Willing the cream to churn

Finally as application and alchemy

struck gold

Ada Brearley struck the deepest darks 

as wounded as their lad's crimsons 

as brocken as his brockback 

Ada knew a thing or two about churning

as the son went down

Claire Crossdale

Gedling

1899

Beneath the earth of Nottingham
Lies our future, to be claimed,
The hole is sunk, the men are drawn
towards a dark and deadly flame

1915

Nine men fall down the hungry shaft
and come back up without their breath
just nine more on the tally chart
of all the men who met their death

In Gedling's pit, where thousands worked
the rich, deep sedimentary seam
from all the world the miners came -
Jamaican beach to Sherwood's dream

1991

The Pit of Nations is no more.
Struck down; an easy callous swipe
of the blue-edged capital sword,
ignoring what remained behind.

Was it worth it? Those six years?
Working on while others starved?
The end was coming sure enough
when unity was rent in half

Ninety years and more of toil
torn to a pile of dust and scrap
leaving a silent open grave
mighty holes filled in and capped

2018 

The pounding of 700 feet
on the crushed and stony tracks
give birth to yet another year
as the distant, lonely sun 
washes gently on our backs

We climb the hills, embrace the dips
accept the cold upon our face
we pass the embryonic homes
as an uncertain future looms
behind our gathering pace

(c) Tim Fellows 2018


Gedling Colliery, which was the life-blood of Gedling and many of the surrounding villages, opened in 1899 and was closed in 1991. 128 men died at the colliery, which produced over a million tonnes of coal per year in the 1960s^. It developed a reputation as the "pit of all nations" because of the diversity of foreign miners who worked there: in the 1960s, ten per cent of the colliery's workforce of 1,400 were originally from the Caribbean.
The site was opened as Gedling Country Park on 28 March 2015 and is the location of Gedling parkrun. 

The Terror

There is a terror lurking deep, deep down,

Cold and crawling, slithering close behind

Through potholes, caves or where coal has been mined.

When and where was it hatched? Why has it grown?

How did that fearful seed come to be sown?

No matter, it’s there, as its victims find,

Thriving in darkness, this terror is blind:

Whomever suffers must face it alone.

Going underground, where there is no light,

The terror is waiting down in its lair,

Waiting for the sort of victim it likes:

Those who can’t reason why they take fright

At thoughts of the pit, of being caught down there,

Of becoming trapped. Then the terror strikes!

                                                                                                                                                                Dave Alton

Winners of the Pony Poetry Competition at the National Coalmining Museum

Category: 5 – 7 years

Pit Ponies

Pit ponies work underground,

Carrying heavy, heavy coal all around,

Waiting for the day in the mines to stop

Filling their carts all the way to the top.

The mines are horrible,

Dark, cold and dangerous,

I think the pit ponies were very brave for us.

                                                                             Chloe Grimshaw (7)

Category: 8 – 12 years

Chip

My name is chip, I live in the pit,

I don’t know if I work night or day.

No spring, no summer, no autumn or winter,

No wind or rain,

It’s all the same.

Because I’m in the pit, dusty and dirty,

Young face I see by the white of the eyes.

I don’t have much of a life,

I work really hard transporting coal

Backwards and forwards.

Don’t know whether it’s day or night,

That’s my life in the pit.

Chip.

                                                                             Olivia Loraine (10)

Wakefield Rising Renga

A bright summer day,

Hover flies over water,

Nothing much happens.

On the Northern Line again,

Remember to feel the heat.

Two years – five boxes,

Is that all we ever were?

Words were left unsaid!

We are now fragments of selves

Ripening into our new self.

Leaves out in the yard

Need sweeping up every day:

A bloomin’ nuisance!

Time, ticking like an endless

Sad cricket, above the fire.

Drifting into sleep

With curtains closed, TV on

Nights long, daylight gone.

Pannage in the library,

Every page a sparkling gem.

   

Slick icy puddle,

Plodging in muddy rapture,

The best things are free.

Season for woolly sweaters,

Welly bobs for rain and snow.

Standard lamp glowing

Makes the room warm and cosy,

Dark shadows on walls.

Lonely, the winter tree can

Never shed it bitter spikes.

Animals awake,

Humans out passed 4pm,

The days get longer.

Let’s have a flingy thingy;

All the way! All the way! All…

The blossom appears

Growing daily on the boughs,

Promises to come.

I am unknown, I am feared,

I am inevitable!

Poets: Claire Crossdale, Fiona Fellows, Timothy Fellows, Stefan G., Jean hales, Halima Mayat, Simon Widdop

Composer: Dave Alton

3 Sonnets

Miner's Sonnet #1

The cage door slams and down the shaft we fall
The rope that holds our lives the first set trap 
Of many heartless ways that death may call
To transport us in its eternal wrap  

The roof that hangs low o'er my lamp-lit head
May just decide to slip and down-ward drop
The work's too hard for me to dwell on dread
That comes from cracking sounds of failing prop

We hew and hack the black and shining seam
As with no warning firedamp slyly creeps
One fatal spark will light the gassy stream
A man is gone, his lonely widow weeps 

Though peril tracks the collier's daily grind
We are within its thrall of pay entwined


Miner's Sonnet #2

With comrades brave to work each day I'd go 
Joking as back and forth the wit and craic
We'd scarce be fear'd or cowed or weakness show
We knew our brothers always had our back

Communities were built on mines and coal
One whole and nourished, fed by that dark pit
The bond we had held tight within our soul
Strong as atoms no government could split 

With pride we marched together as one kin
In war the ranks of blue against us stood
Knowing that should we either lose or win
We'd pay for our revolt in flesh and blood

Yet danger lurked and lives were harsh and tough 
The death of coal did come not soon enough

Miner's Sonnet #3

The strike is lost; so back to work we go
The fire has gone; the will to fight is slain
The comradeship continues down below
But things will never be the same again  

There's coal down there and they all know the price
But no-one counts the cost of human pain
No jobs, no hope, a village slowly dies  
Our leaders arrogant in their disdain

A collier's spirit I will surely find
At school I failed; or was it failing me
I'll not allow despair to rule my mind
Can I a new trade learn at fifty-three? 

Leave behind the only life I've ever known
My future I must plan and I must own

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

Ten Minutes

In the long history of mining there are many large scale disasters that made the news - scores of lives taken in a single, horrible incident. But there are also thousands of individual accidents where men were taken. On 21st February 1935 my great-uncle Jim Hooper went to work at Parkhouse No 7 colliery in Clay Cross (known as the Catty Pit) and never came back. I did some family history research and uncovered the full story in a newspaper article of the time. This poem is a simple retelling of that article - the thing that was so striking for me was that he was so close to the end of his shift.

"Just one more tub

Give it a shove

Ten minutes we'll be done

Get out of here

at ten o'clock

And we'll be going home"

But fate had plans

For a mining man

No journey home for Jim

His pals were scarcely

yards away

when the roof caved in on him

Thirty tons of

rock and coal

A groan was all they heard

His comrades dug

and cleared in vain

their desperation shared

The doctor came

down in the mine

Four hours it took in all

But life had gone

when he was found

The doctor made the call

Around the quiet

grave they stood

His grieving widowed mother

Teddy, George and

My grandad Bill

His three surviving brothers

His sister, girlfriend,

working pals

they came to say goodbye

Just a lad

a score in years

They must have wondered why..

In a Clay Cross pit 

he was lost

One more brave mining lad

Swallowed whole

in the quest for coal

What life may he have had?

Ten minutes more

that was all

Jim would have walked away

From the face

back to his mum

To live another day

When he'd return

to that dark place

To hew the black coal seam

Day on day

his life to pass

Ten minutes killed the dream

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

In memory of James Ernest Hooper 1915-1935