East Cleveland Image Archive

Named and dated again, but can you name any of the men?

The end of a shift at least that is what I am presuming, as some of the men have logs under their arms these would be the off cuts from the pit props.  Anyone recognise any of the men in this photo?

Not the most charming group of men I have ever seen, I think they must be some of the work force of Lumpsey Mine, can I presume that the man in the middle is a blacksmith?  Gentlemen please correct me if I am wrong.  Not a gentleman to correct me but a lady, now can anyone identify any kin folk?

I think the blacksmith is James Kennedy on the photo, as he was recorded as a Blacksmith in 1911, whilst his brother John was listed as a Platelayer Underground.
The container held by the miner on the right was for carrying water or cold tea; it was known as a ‘Dudley’.

Left to right from the back row:

B Catron; J Wilks; T Clay; W Clay; H Clay; W Marshall; C Bealwall; R Marley; J.W. Marshall; J Walton; J Clay; G Best; S Webb; T Curtley; R Clough; R Peacock; W Cross; T Jackson; J Kennedy; D Annear; T Marshall; J Beadon.

What more can I say about this photo the heading says it all.

A series of photographs showing Lumpsy Mine, in this one we can see the man bending at the front has put the’ sprag ’into the wheel of the tub to stop it moving, the sprags were very heavy.  Many of the horse leaders had serious accidents throwing the sprag into the wheel of the moving tub, if they didn’t get it right then it often came back onto their legs, we have to remember tht the mines were not level they had to follow the seam of ironstone up hill and down dale.

How much ironstone can one filler get into a tub?  By the look of that tub quite a lot if you know how to load it.

Note that the guy in the background appears to be using a hand-operated rotary drill, a so-called ratchet. The props are deliberately cut to a bit of a point at the base so that if weight started to come on the working place this weaker part of the prop would start to ‘bunch-up’ and therefore give a visual warning.

Once again thank you Simon for the extra information

After being puzzled by this image – it’s obviously posed, so was it for a training manual?  The ladder on the right looks like a metal ladder, when were they introduced?  The loader is wearing a tin hat (safety helmet, bump hat), so it was after the introduction of the safety helmet, but his colleagues don’t appear to be wearing theirs, so it must have been before they became compulsory.

Simon Chapman tells us: ”This picture appears in an article on Cleveland Ironstone Mining in the Iron and Coal Trades Review of September 1939 and the photos. are credited to The Yorkshire Post, so the newspaper must have had a recent article about the mines. I was told years ago that the picture was taken at Lumpsey.”

Thanks to Simon for the update.