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Monday, November 17, 2008, 08:00
OLD miner Frank Thornell still lives in Coalpit Heath, not far from the house where he was born in 1933, near the village pub, the Ring O’Bells.
Having three sisters and being the only boy in the family, his mother, Annie, doted on him.
Frank, who is busy writing his memoirs, is proud to have grown up in the village and of being one of the fraternity of miners.
“Lady Smythe from Ashton Court owned all the land about here,” he explained over a welcome cup of tea.
“My father, Charlie, looked after her properties before going down the pit when he was in his 30s.
“My mother later worked in the pit canteen.
“When I left school at 14 I went to work for Robinson’s, the paper box people, but about six months later my father said to me: ‘I think you ought to come and work down the pit’.
“It wasn’t just the money, which was generally poor.
“The main reason I decided to go down the pit was because a lot of my mates were starting down there.
“I thought I’d try it and see what it was like.
“It could be dangerous work, but I think the miners – there were about 250 of us in all – enjoyed life in the pits.
“I had to train for six months in Old Mills, Paulton, near Radstock – we got the bus there and back every day – before I could work on the face.
“They told me how the coal seams ended at Cromall because of a fault.
“At our pit, Frog Lane, the two main seams were almost worked out, which left just
the Hollybush, with poor roof conditions.
“I started out as a brickie’s mate, underground, but managed to get a lot of falling stone mixed in with the cement.
“I then started helping to pull drams (tubs on wheels) of coal on and off the cage.
“I couldn’t wait to get to the coal face. They were good miners, but it was difficult to find one to teach you.
“We had 12 pit ponies working with us, pulling the drams,” says Frank.
“They were stabled underground and only came to the surface for a few weeks
each summer.
“Blinded by the daylight we had to put sacks over their heads for while.
“One of my summer jobs was to make hay and bring it in for them.
“The only mechanisation at Frog Lane was a conveyor belt. The horses pulled the coal out on rails.
“We worked with picks – about 200 feet down on a four-foot coal face – using wooden props to hold the roof up.
“We had to put up a lot of timber because the stone and coal was so loose.
“Of course, metal props wouldn’t snap, or even give you any warning that anything was wrong, like a roof collapse.
“Working up to Yate we could hear the trains going overhead.
“What we bought out – about 3,500 tons a month – was excellent quality house coal, almost as good as the Derbyshire bright, the best house coal in the country.
“One perk was free coal to take home for our fires.
“Unlike at Pensford, we had no pit head baths, which meant you had to wash the dust off when you got home. You hoped your wife or mother had some hot water ready.”
The miners worked three shifts. Doing the early one, 6am to 2pm, meant that Frank had his afternoons free.
“I used to play soocer for Frampton Cotterell Juniors and then Iron Acton FC,” he says.
“I would also go shooting.
“After I’d worked two years at Coalpit Heath (it was closed as uneconomic in 1949) I then went to Pensford colliery.
“I was there for 10 years and had to catch the coach every morning at 5am.”
Then came stints in pits at Midsomer Norton and Radstock, with Frank ended his mining life at the National Coal Board’s (NCB) Harry Stoke drift mine at Stoke Gifford.
“That was a terrible mine,” explains Frank. “It should never have opened. There was more stone than coal coming out.”
The NCB must have agreed – the mine closed in 1963, a decade after it opened.
As I finished my tea and started putting my coat on Frank showed me some unusual rocks in his front garden.
“I spent some years digging celestine or spar,” he explained. “It’s a rare mineral, used for fireworks and in industry.
“It was only mined in two places in the world, and one was around Yate.
“I finally got a job at Newman’s of Yate – it’s now the Creda factory – before I retired
at 62.”
I asked a cheerful Frank if he ever felt that his life had been in danger.
“Well, I got buried three times when the roof fell in at both Pensford and Harry Stoke, and I’m still alive.
“But that was just my luck.”
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