Alveley Colliery: End of era remembered 50 years on from pit shutdown
There were appeals, there was a reprieve, but in the end it was all to no avail and 50 years ago Shropshire miners said their goodbyes to Alveley Colliery.
The closure of the pit on January 31, 1969, left the county with only one surviving coal mine, Granville Colliery on the outskirts of Telford, which was destined to close 10 years later.
And of the 525-strong workforce at Alveley, only a handful stayed in the mining industry, although around 100 men were kept on for several weeks to carry out salvage duties.
It was the same old story. The pit was losing money, the men had been told, and there was no likelihood of reversing the situation.
“It was run down on purpose," recalled former miner Monty Drapier as he took a pit down memory lane at the time of the 30th anniversary of the closure in 1999.
Excuse
"They changed the manager who was trying to keep it open, drawing 6,000 tons of coal a week, and then started closing faces, good faces, and keeping the old rubbish open. This caused us to lose production. When we finally closed, it was down to 500 tons a week.
“It was Government policy to close mines. They made a big excuse that the railway was going to close, but the freight railway didn’t close till after the pit.
“The coal we had here was fine, beautiful, household coal, the finest in the country. There’s only one coal better than that and that’s anthracite in Wales. Some of our coal was exported to Germany.”
Others who got together at a village pub in 1999 to remember both the end of the colliery and the end of a way of life had similar tales.
Colin Childs, 73, from The Grove, Bridgnorth, spent 17 years as a miner at Highley and was one of the men who travelled to London to battle for the colliery’s future.
“We had our own engineer’s report done to show the pit was still worth working, but they had already decided,” he was to recall.
“We put up a struggle but we weren’t going to win."
Harry Rudd, from Alveley, spent 30 years at Highley, from the age of 14 and finished as the colliery deputy.
“Of course it was a shock when it closed, but it was the best thing that happened to me. We were taking our lives in our hands every day. I discovered there were safer ways of making money,” he said at the reunion.
The pit at Alveley grew out of a mine on the Highley side of the River Severn, which sank a new shaft at Alveley in the 1930s.
Production started in 1938, with the Highley mine then shutting.
The old mine was linked underground to the new colliery at Alveley, which confusingly was regularly referred to as Highley Colliery in contemporary references, despite its location on the Alveley side of the river.
Mining was a notoriously dirty and dangerous business.
Monty's grandfather was killed mining, his father mined all his life except for the Great War, and Monty suffered a broken leg in a coal fall in 1949 – three days before his wedding – at Bayton Colliery in Worcestershire.
He suffered a broken thigh, on the other leg, when half a ton of coal fell on him at the Alveley pit in 1953. He was in hospital for 16 weeks.
The colliery at Alveley claimed its share of fatalities, too.
The first miner to die was killed on October 17, 1949, the victim being a 58-year-old from the Woodlands Estate at Alveley. His job was to deal with empty wagons, and two became derailed, pinning him against the side of the roadway. There were no eyewitnesses, so nobody was really sure what had happened.
The jury at the inquest pooled their expenses and gave them to his widow.
Fifty years on, the mine continues to be remembered and celebrated, with special events to mark the anniversary.
A Coal Mining Heritage Day has been organised by the Alveley Mining Heritage Group on Saturday, February 2, at the Severn Centre in Bridgnorth Road, Highley, from 10am to 3pm.
It is a free event billed as a great family day out and includes displays of memorabilia, photographs, and artefacts from various groups and individuals, and Highley Colliery Band will provide the musical entertainment.
George Poyner, who is in his 90s, will give a short presentation on his time working at the colliery, where he was a pit carpenter.
Another with first-hand knowledge who will be at the event is Ray Matthews, who was former assistant mechanical engineer at the mine.
And in a separate event held last Thursday, January 31, a book called "Memories of Alveley Colliery" was launched at Highley Working Men's Club. It is one of a series running to four volumes.
