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Art of a lost way of life
Ashington. Bless you.
Why? Because without Ashington, the world of football would never have seen the great Jackie Milburn and Jack and Bobby Charlton – all three came from the Northumberland pit village.
It's 25 miles north of Newcastle, the city famed for its bridges over the Tyne and, now, its Championship football team. It grew from a few farms in the early 19th century to become a legend as the largest mining village in the world.
But there's much much more to Ashington – there was also a very special group of artists.
In the 1930s, the Ashington Group, aka The Pitman Painters, attended art appreciation classes organised by the Workers Education Association. But under the guidance of tutor Robert Lyons, they began to produce their own paintings, recording the subject they knew best – life in and around the pit and the local mining community.
They became the toast of the art world, and for a spell were feted and celebrated. Unruffled by the attention and artistic opportunities that came their way, they remained true to their roots, mining coal by day and sharing a passion for art by night.
Gradually, their numbers diminished, and, eventually, all that was left of the Ashington Group was their paintings, 80 of which are on show at the nearby Woodhorn Colliery Museum, where they provide a fascinating insight into the life of a Northumberland miner.
The exhibition, in one of the galleries at the museum, has in recent times become the focus of renewed national and international attention, thanks to Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall.
Inspired by the story of the painting miners, in 2007, Lee Hall penned a play to re-launch Live Theatre in Newcastle, but such was the reception to the two month-long runs, that the production of The Pitmen Painters transferred to London.
Little would the men from a small mining community in the North-East have imagined back in the 1930s that their interest in art would create such a stir more than 80 years on.
But their story has taken the theatre world by storm and has been described as "a wonderful piece of theatre: comic, sad and stirring in the same breath".
Next week The Pitmen Painters comes, fittingly, to Sheffield's Lyceum Theatre. The pit at Ashington is now as silent as those which helped build thriving communities in South Yorkshire.
Some died a natural death, but many were wiped from the face of the earth after the year-long miners' strike. Gone but not forgotten.
So, the North-East and South Yorkshire have much in common. For generations, their men and boys slaved underground to carve out the wealth and driving force of a nation where almost everything was built on coal.
And while most colliers of Grimethorpe may never have wielded a paintbrush other than to limewash the cellar, a good number from Ashington picked up a paintbrush to record what they saw every day. Life. Life down the pit and life in the pit village.
There were no Constables or Turners among their ranks, but the likes of Oliver Kilbourn, Jimmy Floyd, Fred Laidler, Len Robinson and the rest of The Pitmen Painters did themselves – and their communities – proud.
So, apart from scenes from the coal face, there are, among others, pictures of a family Christmas, wash days, pigeons and whippets, decorating the parlour – a brief but lasting portrait of one small area of Britain in the 20th century. Ashington today is like many a former South Yorkshire pit town – unrecognisable from when coal was king. Gone is the monstrous spoil heap which dominated the landscape.
George Orwell wrote in 1937: "A slag heap is, at best, a hideous thing, because it is so planless and functionless. It is something just dumped on the earth, like the emptying of a giant's dustbin. On the outskirts of mining towns there are frightful landscapes where the horizon is ringed completely round by jagged grey mountains, and underfoot is mud and ashes and overhead the steel cables where tubs of dirt travel slowly across miles of country."
But as a picture is worth 1,000 words, it's better to go back a year, to 1936, when pitman painter Harry Wilson captured, in oils, Ashington Colliery, complete with its smoking chimneys and its dark, brooding mountain of spoil. It's a permanent reminder of what coal meant – great wealth for a few, great labour and blight for many.
The museum at Woodhorn stands on the site of one of Ashington's five pits, which ceased production in the 1980s. Some of the old buildings remain. Now they're protected, listed; silent reminders of how the mighty are fallen.
And overshadowing them now that the spoil heap has been cleared away, is a glimpse of the future – a startlingly modern building which houses
both the museum and Northumberland's archives.
You can take a trip through time from the early days of Ashington to when,
after a year on strike fighting the threat of pit closures, the still-proud miners marched back to work behind their banners.
It's a walk through history that many remember first-hand – their homes,
their lives, their deaths.
One small part of the exhibition is protected by plastic covering to prevent it from being damaged. It's a quote from Margaret Thatcher.
Of the miners, she infamously said: "We had to fight the enemy without in
the Falklands.
"We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."
The people of the North-East (and South Yorkshire, and Kent and Wales and Scotland) who have, or had any connection with coal mining, have long memories.
Woodhorn also offers a breath of fresh air in the form of a country park. It's where that monstrous spoil heap stood. In 1973, a monumental reclamation scheme shifted 100 years of the worst aspect of mining history and created a green and pleasant land. Something else which the pitmen painters could never have imagined.
Woodhorn is open Wed-Sun and bank holidays, and Tues-Sun during school holidays. More information from 01670 528080 or visit www.experiencewoodhorn.com
The Pitmen Painters at Sheffield Lyceum, Tuesday, November 3 to Saturday, November 7.
www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk or phone 0114 276 9922.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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