“On Boxing Day 1933 at fourteen years of age I became a working man. I set off to walk the two miles to the pit at two in the morning. It was pitch dark and I felt very apprehensive as I walked through the tunnel under the railway embankment at the street end, eventually emerging onto the pit road. I remember being relieved when it snowed and everything became lighter. There were no pit-head baths in those days, at least, not at this pit, so if you got wet travelling to work you were obliged to work in damp clothes…..”
“…..After I had been given a lamp and a disc I moved out of the lamp cabin to be confronted by a flight of steel steps leading onto a gantry which crossed the mineral line. The gantry led onto the cage bank level which was about thirty feet above ground. At the opposite end of the gantry reared a great pit-head, together with its pulley wheels and ropes.”
Norman Cornish
Details and Pricing
Media: Oil on board
Size: 53 x 75 cm
SOLD
