Sisters’ Pit Garforth, Postcard view, probably around the beginning of the twentieth century, taken from the road bridge, which is still in use today.
I was in the local supermarket recently and asked a question of the checkout lady, see my earlier post about the purchase of alcohol, then on a more recent visit, whilst stuffing my purchases into the thin plastic carrier bags I thought, what would the present incumbent at the till know about what preceded the supermarket, structurally speaking; sadly the word preceded proved to be the stumbling block to this line of questioning, so I tried again and instead said.
“Do you know that there used to be a coal mine where this supermarket stands today”
“I had heard this”, was the monosyllabic reply.
“Funny how things change and here today you would have no inkling of the grim colliery buildings once spread over this area”, I reflected, perhaps too knowingly.
“Yes”, he agreed, and with that our conversation slid down the chute of pointless discussions to land heavily on the many billions of words already consigned to a similar grave.
Nonetheless what made me think of this was my recent addition on the Parlington History site, where the colliery was flooded in 1883, and less than a year later two miners fell 100 yards [92 metres] to their deaths from a platform in the mine shaft, and a third incident in 1896 where the shaft-man was knocked from the cage as they descended to the mine workings.
[Friday 23rd October 2009] I’ve now added on the history site a pop-up image of the area where Sisters Pit used to be, overlaid by the earlier mine layout.
Very interesting, have at look at http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/factmine/minecond.htm
Thanks Jack, I looked at the site you mentioned, the pictures certainly reflect the horrors of mining in the nineteenth century. I notice that there are some pictures of “corves”, these are mentioned in the articles from the Leeds Mercury, so perhaps they were dragging coal around in that fashion in 1883, Horrendous!
Cheers
Brian
Just a thought – have you considered that the photo of Garforth Colliery may be of the pit off Ninelands Lane?
The footbridge was at the bottom of the road near the junction with Hazlewood Avenue.
Tug
I’m pretty sure the photo is of the Sisters Pit, if you look on my history site there is a plan of the former pit overlaid on a recent aerial plan of the area, this shows clearly the railway lines matching those on the photograph.
http://www.parlington.co.uk/mines.lasso?process=10