Gerry Brooke looks back at life in the South Gloucestershire coal mines

COAL mining in South Gloucestershire – just shallow pits rather than deep mines – first gets a mention way back in the 13th century.

Day holes and bell pits, as they were known, continued to be worked throughout the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

These pits were part of extensive coal seams which stretched right under Bristol from nearby Cromall right down to Radstock in Somerset.

As technology advanced during the 18th and 19th centuries, so deeper shafts were able to be dug.

Further pioneering advances such as steam engines – Devonian Thomas Newcomen installed his first workable engine in 1712 – which could pump out flood water, enabled mines to be sunk to even greater depths.

By the 1840s, there were four steam engines working in the Coalpit Heath area, which by then had eight pits, all owned by Sir John Smythe of Ashton Court who had inherited the mineral rights.

By now, 65,000 tons of coal were being extracted annually with transportation to Bristol being via a dramway – trucks drawn by horses along a track to the river Avon at Keynsham – and then by water.

But this system only lasted nine years before a proper steam railway connected the pits – Mays Hill, Ram Hill, Ram Engine, Churchleaze (1 and 2), Orchard and New Engine – direct to Bristol.

Frog Lane, the last pit to close in 1949, was not sunk until 1853.

But life for the 18th-century miner and his family wasn’t all just work.

In 1739, the preacher George Whitfield wrote in his journal: “The place where I preached at Coalpit Heath being near the maypole, I took occasion to warn them of mis-spending their time revelling and dancing.

“Oh, that all such entertainment were put a stop to.”

In those days there were 300 colliers working in the pits – nearly 50 of them boys under the age of 13 and another 50 under 18.

The miners were paid £1 for a 10-hour, six-day shift, with the boys’ pay less than half that.

The lads were employed to pull wooden tubs – plus up to two hundredweight of coal – by a belt fastened around their waist plus a chain, the infamous “guss and crook”.

Since the galleries were low – most coal seams were only between two and three feet high – the lads often had to crawl along the passages with the chain between their legs.

Smaller boys tugged the tubs while others pushed.

Thankfully there was no gas in the pits, which meant that candles could be used

quite freely.

The coal, at first carried out in baskets on the miners’ backs, was later raised to the surface using a windlass and rope set up over the shaft.

Bucket hooks meant that several baskets could be raised at a time.

The “Whimsey”, which came into use about 1870, was a large horizontal drum around which a rope was coiled.

Operated by a horse it meant that up to 30 tons of coal could be raised each day.

By the end of the 19th century, mining was concentrated at Frog Lane pit, but production finally ceased in 1949, when the main seams were all worked out.

But this wasn’t quite the end – between 1959 and 1963 the National Coal Board operated the Harry Stoke Drift Mine, but this was not a success.

Ram Hill still has the remains of a steam engine house, a horse gin, a mine shaft, the Dramway terminus, the reservoir (Bitterwell Lake) and a boiler house.

Next year marks the 60th anniversary of the closure of the Frog Lane pit, and South Gloucestershire Mines Research Group (SGMRG), Yate and District Heritage Centre plus local community and heritage groups are joining forces to mark the event.

There is to be a book, an exhibition, a CD and numerous other events and activities.

Do you know anybody who worked in the pit?

Or anyone who has any photos or records of a family member who worked there?

The combined groups will be holding a road show on Saturday, November 29, between noon and 5pm at the Miners’ Institute on Badminton Road, and would like to meet up with anybody who can help.

If you would like to know more, then contact Steve Grudgings of SGMRG on

07768 381502, or visit www.sgmrg.co.uk