Grimethorpe Colliery: How the village has been 'countryfied' in 30 years since pit closure

The roots and soul of a still tight-knit community are summed-up in its simple inscription: “A village built on coal. Where miners worked hard for their families. This wheel stands proud in their memory.”

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the pit’s closure, bringing a deeply-ingrained way of life to an end almost overnight.

Three decades on, the landscape has changed beyond recognition; the pit’s working history is largely buried underground along with millions of pounds worth of redundant machinery, the pithead is long gone and the old spoil heaps are now New Park Springs, greened-over and covered in trees alongside the modern road leading to the village.

The Dearne Valley link road was constructed as part of a huge regeneration scheme to resuscitate an area reeling from the pit closure programme of the early 1990s.

Grimethorpe, which is six miles north-east of Barnsley, was cited as the most deprived village in the country in an EU study just a year after the colliery closed.

Fast forward to the present day and the village landscape is now dotted with neat, modern housing developments, corresponding with the largescale creation of light industrial units which now butt up against the edge of the village around the Dearne Valley link road.

Local councillor and former Barnsley MP Jeff Ennis, born and bred in Grimethorpe, acknowledged “there’s hardly any living memory or monument to the pit, you can’t see where the pit was or anything like that,”

Local amateur historian Terry Middleton, whose family roots in the village go back 100 years, expressed amazement that “they’ve countryfied it”.

Mr Middleton worked above ground for British Coal all his working life and after retirement spent countless hours researching miners who had died at Grimethorpe pit to help with a project that ultimately delivered a moving memorial in front of St Luke’s Church in the heart of the village.

“I remember somebody who came to visit from somewhere industrial who said how lovely it was, which astounded me at the time because I’d never thought that about Grimethorpe.”

He also recalled the level of pollution that used to blight the village: “The pit didn’t cause all that much, the coal processing did – the washed coal and god knows what from all over the area.

“You were sort of an inch deep in wet coal dust when you went to Grimethorpe when it was at its worst but all that’s gone now so, well, it looks good.”

Elsie Smith, who came to the village 60 years ago with her late husband Bryan Smith, a celebrated tenor horn player with the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, echoed the sentiment.

Like many others, she used to "riddle” for pieces of usable coal on the now transformed spoil heaps.

She said: “The pit stacks have all been landscaped and there’s beautiful walks, beautiful views.

"You wouldn’t believe there were pit stacks there now if you came and had a look.”

Thanks to the cleaner air, “you don’t have to wipe your washing lines down,” she added.

Overlooking New Park Springs, large wind turbines now cut through that cleaner air; an eye-catching statement of a new era far removed from the old.

The 1981 census recorded that 44 per cent of all workers in Grimethorpe were miners.

Grimethorpe colliery was one of the deepest pits in Britain and, following mergers with the Houghton Main and Dearne Valley pits, employed more than 6,000 men at the time of its closure in May 1993.

Brassed Off

The pit’s working life came to an end in 1993 but its name very much lives on in the present through the world-renowned Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

The brass band helped inspire the hugely successful film Brassed Off, released three years after the pit’s closure, bringing a level of fame and acclaim which still makes concert tickets a comfortable sell nearly three decades on.

When the pit’s closure was announced in 1992, 17 members of the band still worked at the colliery, all of whom were soon made redundant.

Band director Andrew Coe said the legacy of the pit and its history was something its players are keenly aware of.

“The players might not admit to that but I think there is a certain pressure because of the reputation and legacy and what the band represents in terms of the history of an industry that was fundamental to the national history of Britain.

“The coal that was produced really did fire the economy of the country. Grimethorpe is a very well-known brand and it’s a famous brass band - probably the most famous name in the world of brass bands.”

Joining the band “is pretty close to being the pinnacle of what you’re going to achieve in your musical career,” he added.

Brassed Off’s success led to high-profile performances across the world but the band has always remained based in the village. Formed in 1917, it was very much part and parcel of the colliery where most of the musicians worked.

As its reputation grew, the National Coal Board, formed in 1946 with post-war nationalisation, relentlessly promoted the band which was playing up to 200 concerts a year and essentially full-time.

Those days are long gone, with the number of concerts is closer to 30 and only a couple of members remain from the Brassed Off days.

Police state

The closure of Grimethorpe pit came less than a decade after the year-long miners’ strike in 1984/85 which left deep scars on the village and widespread resentment towards the police.

Bitter memories are still close to the surface in any discussion about the pit’s history. Local councillor and former Barnsley MP Jeff Ennis described the time as living under “a police state” while former local NUM official Johnny Wood recalled the police acting like “an army group”.

Attitudes towards the police today are far more positive and relationships mostly healed but a lingering sensitivity may still remain for South Yorkshire Police who declined to make a local officer available for interview.

Mr Wood recalled one particular memory of policing at the time: “The lads used to go onto pit stacks and to get a bit of fuel they’d riddle muck to get coal out of it to keep fires going through winter.

“And they (police) went onto the pit stacks at Grimethorpe like an army group going on and they were attacking miners… clubbing them and picking on them on the streets, the whole job lot.

“It caused a lot of anger. The older end were seeing it and the younger end were seeing it. So it put a lot of people against the police but it weren’t your community police it was them that were brought in on a political basis to try and end the strike and they used every tactic that they could do.”

Attitudes towards the police were poisoned for years as a result. Mr Ennis said the pit closure programme only a few years later stoked the sense of grievance.

“A lot of the people who went on strike, they found it really difficult to forgive the police,” he said. He recalled miners being stopped from travelling from Barnsley to protest elsewhere and added: “You can’t prevent people from showing their disgust or what they feel about the government’s policies. We were definitely a police state in South Yorkshire in 1984, definitely.”

Local MP Stephanie Peacock said there was “no doubt that part of the reason crime went from below the national average to quite significantly above it in the 90s was people didn’t want to speak to the police, didn’t want to report it.”

She added: “I did a walkaround with the police in Grimethorpe last year and they have got good relations with the community but… if you talk to people and they remember the strike, they remember the role of the police.”

Mr Wood said some bitterness remains with older ex-miners who remember the dark days of the strike but that attitudes had generally begun to mellow in the late 1990s, in the wake of the pit’s closure. The change also coincided with a greater emphasis on community policing.

“They all understand that you need the police at the end of the day. We all understand that,” he said.

Mr Ennis said community policing now worked well in the village. Grimethorpe, like many communities, still has problem with anti-social behaviour but he added that “the people are more respectful of the police now and for what they’re trying to do in the area.”

He said the legacy of the strike had been hard for the police to “pull back… But I think they’re doing their best.”

Memories

There is little sentimental pining for the hard and dangerous work which once dominated life in Grimethorpe but the sense of community forged over nearly 100 years of the pit’s lifetime lives on.

Danny Gillespie, a former miner with a 36-year career at the colliery, said: “It wasn’t just work, it was a family. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody, it was just a family.”

But he also acknowledged the end of work carrying the threat of industrial disease meant there were men alive today who otherwise wouldn’t have been. An end to industrial pollution in the village air also meant residents can simply “breathe better”.

Although Mr Gillespie loved working at the pit and recalled the devastating impact the closure initially had, he said his view had changed over time.

“When they closed… it meant that men here didn’t get the chance to go down the mines and that was a good thing because it wasn’t a really good life and it meant they moved in a different direction.”

That new direction has involved an array of large, light industrial units tied to the link road built to offset the shock of a sharp rise in unemployment and deprivation when the pit went.

Local Labour MP Stephanie Peacock highlighted the positive impact of multi millions of pounds of regeneration money, much of it delivered during the years of the last Labour government, but said the effects of the closure were still felt because nothing has fully replaced the loss of an entire industry.

“It used to be a ready-made employment career path. While it was dangerous there was also the opportunity to train to be an electrician and other skilled jobs as well as going down the pit.

“But whatever route you took there was employment that was secure and well paid and that was very local.”

Terry Middleton, now in his 70s after a long career with the National Coal Board, underlined just how entwined the pit and local employment used to be.

“I remember at school, when I was maybe 12, the headmaster said hands-up all those whose dads don’t work at the pit and nobody put their hand up because everybody’s did,” he said.

The ties that bound people together, never more evidently than during the 1984/85 strike, are still part of the social fabric today.

“I’ve never known a village pull together like it during the strike. We all shared what we’d got,” said Elsie Smith, who set up an award-winning neighbourhood watch scheme in the village with Mr Gillespie when crime shot up after the pit’s closure.