Memories of a pit carpenter; George Poyner

George Poyner worked at Alveley Colliery from 1942 to 1968 as a carpenter. In this article he describes his recollections. The article has been printed in the Transactions of the Alveley Historical Society

George Poyner, Pit Carpenter at Alveley [+]
George Poyner at work in the stores' compound at Alveley Colliery, c1955

I was born on June 27th 1927 in Highley. My father, Jack Poyner had worked in the mines at Kinlet and Highley since coming out of the army after the First World War. I left Highley school in August 1941 and went for a interview with Mr Chesworth, the chief engineer and Mr Caine, the assistant manager at Alveley Colliery. I wanted to be a carpenter and Dad had asked them about a job just before I left School. They gave me a job in the carpenters’ shop. I was lent a saw, hammer and chisel by another carpenter, George Elcock and my first job was making a roller box. This was a wooden box which contained a cast iron roller. This fitted between the rails. In those days the coal was loaded into tubs and these were pulled along the rails by a wire rope attached to a haulage engine. The roller box stopped the rope from dragging on the floor.

In the workshops when I started I remember Harry Latham, a shaftsmen, Alma Honeybourne, Fred James, Fred Guy and Ern James, a sawyer who left after a few months. The colliery manager was Mr Machin who was well respected by most people.

On a Saturday morning the lads in the workshop would catch a train at Highley Station to travel up to Ketley where we would walk up to Walker Technical College, Oakengates. Later a Whittles Bus was laid on for us on Monday afternoons. At the college we were taught mining science by a lecturer called John Smith. We also had a lecture on rope capping by Ted Carrey, the engineer at Madeley Wood Colliery.

When I started, Alveley Colliery was really new. It was sunk in 1935/6 and had only been in full production since 1940. Alveley had nice new brick workshops, offices, a lamproom, winding house and ambulance room. The headframe was made of concrete with a height of 60 feet to the winding wheels and 20 feet above that to a gantry for lifting or changing the wheels. I think the concrete legs were 18” square. The hay shed was built of old bricks from Highley Colliery and Highley Brickyard, which closed in the early 1920s. The garages were built of brick and the doors were made out of the Pitch Pine timber taken from the Kinlet Colliery wooden heeadframe. They were cut into boards 9” x 1” and hand planed and grooved to make doors 5’ wide by 10’ high. The garages were used for 2 lorries, a van and two cars belonging to Mr Walley, chairman of the Highley Mining Company.

Also on the surface were the screens. These were where the coal was brought to be sorted and graded according to size. There were two sets of screens. The Peggson Screens were primitive, noisy and dusty and were simply made from sheets of corrugated iron. The coal from these went for landsale; it was taken away in lorries by local coal merchants. There would often be 10 to 12 lorries waiting at the weighbridge at 7.00 in the morning to take slack and nuts (small coal) to Stourport Power Station. The Peggson screens lasted about two years and were replaced by new steel shakers and tipplers.

Most coal was taken in wooden tubs to the Baker Screens on the other side of the river. They were pulled along by a 7/8” wire rope which passed over my roller boxes. The rope went around two sets of wheels to guide it to the screens. The tubs crossed the river by a bridge which was made of concrete. This is still there: a single span. It is a fine construction, completed in June 1937 and designed mainly to carry coal over the river. At the screens the tubs were unhooked from the rope and moved forward automatically by a creeper and retarder. The tension and return wheels for the ropeway were beneath this. The tubs were emptied into the screens and the coal was sorted and eventually loaded into railway trucks.

Horses were used on the surface to take the dirt or stone waste to the tip and the empty tubs from the landsale screens to the pit top. My father looked after the 50 horses underground along with George Price and Job Hammonds. The man in the hay shed was George Wood and every day enough corn and hay for all the horses had to be taken to the pit top.

My first experience underground was when I was 15. I went down with Alan Kelly, a fitter, to drill holes, 1½” diameter into a baulk of timber for a tension screw for a haulage rope.

I usually worked on the surface. I worked with Fred Guy on the canteen making tables and benches. As we were in the war, we had to make black-out curtains for all the windows. The water in the canteen was boiled in two small cast iron boilers and I had the job of chopping sticks to light the fire. We were allowed pork pies every day as part of our ration; the van used to fetch them from Marsh and Baxter’s in Kidderminster.

The wooden tubs were repaired in the shop at the pit top by the side of the track, about every 6 months. There would also be 50 new tubs to be made; we were paid piece-work for these, 12 shillings a tub. The carpenters and tub repairers stayed over to make these. The tub repairers were Jim Breakwell, Arthur Mayers, Stan Link and Dennis Mullard.

The colliery was nationalised in 1947 and a lot of changes took place. Mr Machin was promoted to Area General Manager. The manager who followed was Ray Hasbury; he had been a surveyor at Madeley Wood Colliery. He was in his late 20s. The manager’s job was an arduous task for one so young but he rapidly gained experience and moved on to become Area General Manager. He came back to Highley in 1994 when we had the pit wheel installed at the colliery site to commemorate all those had worked at the mine from 1878 to 1969.

In 1950 the baths and the new canteen were opened. It was a great asset to the miners as they could shower and go home clean. The baths and canteen were opened by Sir Ben Smith, chairman of the West Midlands Division of the Coal Board. I remember building the stage for the opening ceremony. The canteen was a smart building adjoining the baths. My sister Brenda worked there for a short time; all the family worked at the colliery at this point! Of my brothers, Ray and Des were electricians, Arthur worked underground and Geoff and myself on the surface. Dad was the horsekeeper. I well remember Brenda and mother cutting the snap, sandwiches for 6 hungry miners! I also remember the colliery breaking the record of drawing 1000 tons of coal in a day. Everyone was given a savings certificate of 15 shillings.

The colliery was only about 20 years old when there was a major reconstruction. This was about 1958. The shaft was deepened from 340 yards to 400 yards and a new road was made underground to the coal seams. It was a major undertaking. Boreholes were sunk at Six Ashes, beyond Alveley. It was my job to make boxes to store the cores that came out of the boreholes and then these could be checked to see what strata they were drilling through.

The Staple shaft was another major undertaking when a 15’ diameter shaft was sunk underground. This was a pit within a pit; a shaft that connected two underground levels at the colliery. It was an escape shaft; if anything happened to the Alveley winder or shaft the men could go down the staple shaft, get into the old workings and walk underground beneath the river and then up the Highley shafts. I have not mentioned the Highley Colliery. It was sunk in 1878 and was the first large mine in the village. It was closed for coal winding when Alveley started but the two pits were connected underground. Highley was kept open to serve as an air shaft; air went down the shaft at Alveley, around the workings and then was sucked up the Highley shafts by a fan. After the war the old winder at Highley Colliery was converted to electricity from steam. The boilers were dismantled and the site on which they stood was levelled. Highley had 2 steel headgears about 40 feet high. I well remember painting them with Ken Price. The pulleys were 9 feet in diameter and the winding rope was 11/8” diameter. The cages in the shafts were small and had been made by the pit blacksmith; they were about 6’ high and 6’ by 3’ wide. To stop them swinging about when they went down the shaft there were two guide ropes for each cage. The shafts were enclosed with brickwork and had concrete roofs. This building had to be air tight so the fan would draw the air up the shafts. There were big wooden doors leading to the shafts, about 6’ square with a smaller door about 12” square to relieve the pressure so the big door could be opened. Highley had a beautiful winding house with Victorian cast iron window frames. The only remains of Highley Colliery now are the pit offices which have been turned into flats.

I also haven’t said anything about Kinlet Pit. This was started in 1893 and closed in 1937. Dad worked at Kinlet before he was transferred to Highley. The winding house still stands, close to the New Road on the Kinlet side of the brook. Alma Honeybourne told me a lot about Kinlet pit whilst we worked in the shops. The wooden headgear was built by a carpenter called Spider Matthews. The winding house took quite a battering when the scrap men moved in to take away the engine. They did not want the winding rope and so they thought they would let it down the shaft. However as more and more rope went down the shaft it gathered speed and it ran away with itself. This caused the winding engine to explode, blowing the roof off the engine house. However the walls are still standing.

I stayed at Alveley pit throughout most of the 1960s. In the late 1960s the Coal Board said that it was unprofitable and decided to close it. I left a few months before the end and after a few weeks at the Star Aluminium I moved to Westpoy Construction where I carried on my trade as a carpenter.