When time finally ran out for last of the Charity Collieries in Bedworth

[dutchman]

Hundreds of desperate men, many with young families to feed, faced life below the breadline when the headgear at the Charity Pit in Bedworth stopped turning.

They were given just seven days' notice that the colliery, one of the oldest in the area, was to cease production after a century-and-a-half.

An announcement in the Coventry Herald newspaper sent a shudder down the scar-tissued backbones of the colliers who worked at the mine in Leicester Road on the Collycroft-Bedworth 'border.'

At the height of its production during the First World War, more than 800 men and boys were employed underground and on the surface under the watchful eye of the manager, F H Briggs, and his second-in-command Jabez Wagstaffe.

Closure was scheduled for September 13, 1924, when their livelihoods would be stripped away, leaving them with a bleak and uncertain future in a Britain that was already in the grip of a depression.

Stark and to the point, the newspaper announcement read: "Owing to the impossibility of getting sufficient output to cover the expenses of running this Colliery and to the heavy losses sustained during the past few years, and more especially during the last six months, the directors are reluctantly compelled to close the Colliery down."

Stanley Brothers leased the mine from the Nicholas Chamberlaine Trust, but had faced what seemed an almost endless struggle to make it financially viable.

Contrary to public perception, there were at least five charity collieries, all sunk on land belonging to the Nicholas Chamberlaine Trust, which made a fortune from the 'black gold' on which Bedworth was built.

Using previously unknown material and information that was not available to his predecessors, Bedworth-born, industrial historian Mike Kinder has shed fresh light on them in his painstakingly researched publication A History of Charity Collieries in Bedworth.

In it he writes: "The history of the charity collieries in Bedworth is mired in myth, mistakes, misunderstanding, inconsistency and contradiction.

"To take one simply basic example of a misunderstanding, it is generally believed that there was just one Charity Colliery, whereas, in fact, there were five (or more) which operated over a period 1777-1924."

But the Charity Colliery on the Collycroft-Bedworth 'border' is the best known and was the last to close, although Exhall and Newdigate Collieries went on to maintain the area's proud mining tradition.

Not a trace of the colliery remains. Where it was now lies buried beneath the homes and gardens of the Saxon Head housing estate which has Sutherland Drive running straight through the middle.

But a few years ago, Barrie Courts from Nuneaton produced a rare relic from the mine – a medal awarded to his grandfather, Isaac Edward Courts, for his work with the rescue team.

Around the edge of the medal in blue enamel were the words 'Charity Colliery Rescue Corps' and on the back was engraved 'I Courts 1915.'

Like the medals and lamp checks at other collieries run by Stanley Brothers, it was decorated with filigree. Miners at the other pits had to make do with plain ones.

The Courts family appear to have had strong connections with the Charity Colliery. An Amos Courts is shown holding two Davy lamps on a photograph taken at the pithead with the Rev W J Lait, minister of Bedworth Baptist Church.

As well as being a collier, Amos was also Sunday School Superintendent at the Baptist Church. Mining and Nonconformism ran in the family.

Barrie Courts' investigations into his family tree showed that his grandfather, also named Isaac Edward, was a lay preacher at Salem Baptist Church at Longford.

So steeped in religion was he that, if any of his children misbehaved on a Sunday, he would wait until Monday to dish out their punishment!

Still spreading the word to the end, Issac died on Sunday, July 17, 1883, on his way home from preaching at Bretford on the Fosse Way between Coventry and Rugby. He was in his 59th year

An inscription on his tombstone in the old graveyard at Salem Baptist record that he died: "On his way home after preaching for the Lord at Bretford."

Archive editor Mort Birch also has strong family connections with the Charity Colliery. He says: "My grandfather Jesse Birch was a deputy at the mine when it closed and I still have a what I believe was his lamp check showing the Stanley Bros' filigree.

"At the time, he lived in Shepperton Street at Coton and would walk to the mine. I remember him telling me that he would often get as far as Griff Hollows and a hooter would sound, telling the men that the colliery would not be working that day and he had to turn round and walk back home."

Many local characters worked at the Charity Colliery, including Herbert Bonsor, a deputy who became landlord of the Miners Arms pub in Marston Lane which was built to serve the colliers.

Jack Orton worked as a shunter on the old steam engines that hauled the coal wagons from the colliery, across Leicester Road, alongside Downing's Brickworks, under the railway bridge into Alexander Road and down to the canal arm at Furnace Fields where they would be unloaded on to the waiting narrow boats.

Part of his job as a 15-year-old was to stop the traffic and pedestrians with a red flag as the wagons crossed Leicester Road. People would hurry to get past so they did not have to wait for the train.

There were gates on either side of the road which he had to swung back to let the trains go through. Jack's father worked in the old colliery workshops and helped him to make one of the old posts on which the gates were hung.

Years after the colliery closed the post was still there, almost hidden in the hedge that once ran along Leicester Road and shielded part of the old colliery site from view.

As a shunter, Jack worked with the two old tank engines 'Glenmayne' and 'Forest No 1,' both four-wheelers that were made by Pecketts at Bristol.

'Glenmayne' was later sold to the Haunchwood Brick and Tile Company and continued working until it finally went to the scrapyard in the summer of 1960.

The faithful old workhorse got its distinctive name from the palatial home on the Scottish borders of Colonel Harry Smith Murray, chairman of Stanley Brothers and managing director of Scottish wool firm Sanderson & Murray.

Before 'Glenmayne' and 'Forest No1', there was another engine at the colliery named 'Ironsides'. It was driven by Jim Case whose son Jim also drove the locomotives that were so vital to production at the pit.

Long hours – 12 hour days in all kinds of weather – took their toll on old Jim, who was crippled with arthritis and rheumatism by the time he was forced to retire.

But his son maintained the family tradition and eventually moved to Newdigate Colliery where he drove 'Lucy' and 'Suzanne', the two old engines named after the children of Sir Francis Newdigate, who owned the mine.

Once the closure of the Charity Colliery had been announced, it was abandoned by November 21, 1924, barely six weeks later. The speed of it all shows just how hopeless the situation had become.

For years, the headgear and some of the outbuildings remained as a decaying and desolate reminder of what it used to be.

Charity Banks Brickworks, whose chairman was legendary comedian Norman Wisdom, took over the site and extracted the colliery waste to manufacture breeze blocks for building.

Albert Greenhough managed it for him and Norman was a regular visitor, calling in at Collycroft WMC to meet some of the workers.

Eventually, the waste, dug from the bowels of the earth by generations of colliers, was exhausted and developers moved in to build the homes on the Saxon Head Estate – obliterating the last of Bedworth's charity collieries.

A History of Charity Collieries in Bedworth by Mike Kinder is published by the Nuneaton Local History Group which can be visited at viewtopic.php?f=8&t=32901

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