Holly 18, 24th June

Our outing today was a coal mining tour with a man called Tony and he used to work the coal mine. He started when he was 17.  We didn't really go in the real mine because it was too far down. Our tour started in a room called the Winding room for the Bertie mine. The other mine was called Trevor.  The Winding room was where a man would pull a big cage up from the mine.  The cage would come up at 30 feet per second.  Tony said it was very fast and scary. The next room was the lantern room that they all kept their helmets and lanterns in.  They had a special way of seeing if there was poisonous gas in the mine.  They got a lantern that had a special cover over it that the flame could not get out of. They could tell what gas there was by the size of the blue haze around the flame.

We went down a mine shaft and tony said that they used dynamite to blow holes in the mines to make the tunnels bigger. Children and women also worked in mines.  They pulled carts and opened doors for the carts. They had to work in the dark.  The children started working in the mines when they were only 6 years old.  In the mines there were ponies that also pulled the carts. The ponies stayed in the mines all the time except for 2 weeks holiday.