Eventually, the owners had to close down certain mines, as all the coal had been worked out. One of the many unemployed miners looking for work at that time was my Father. He had heard there was plenty of coal mining in Rossington a small village near Doncaster in Yorkshire, so he went to there to find work.

How fate works, he took lodgings with a family by the name of Taylor. Little did he know that it was in that home he would meet his future wife.

I don’t know how long he was in Rossington, however, he was there long enough to marry my Mam (May), and take her back to Durham. Now the situation had changed, and there was lots of work once again.

My father’s job down the pit when he first got married was that of a putter. To explain, those days there was little machinery down the mines. The height of the working area at the coal face was governed by the height of the coal seam, therefore, if the seam was 4ft that was the working area. Generally, it was 5ft and working in that height was not too bad. In later years when the coal was running out, the workers, would work in areas where the coal seam was only 3ft. This was pretty hard on the miners having to work in so little headroom, they had to pick at the coal laying on their sides. This did not last for long, an entirely new method was used when the seams of coal were only 3ft. For this type of mining, conveyor belts were introduced.

The workers at the coal face would hew the coal with picks and shovels and load it into small tubs. To get these tubs to the gantry, where they were taken to the main shaft; a man was employed to push these tubs, this man was called a putter. When a man was young he did this job; as it required lots of muscle and energy, then as he got older he then became a hewer at the coal face. A putter usually worked with 4 hewers, which kept him pretty busy. This is the job he had when I was a child.

Should the gantry be a great distance away, ponies were used to pull the tubs. There are many stories about these ponies, they would work in the dark with the putter helping to push from the back of the tub or tubs.

It was usual to move three or four tubs on at one time. The story of ponies used down the pit is not very nice. Some of these would be down the pits for 10 to 20 years without seeing daylight. These poor ponies were more than once beaten by some of the putters. However, on the other hand, some putters really felt for them. They tried to make their lives a little better. The only time many of these ponies got to the surface was when they were dead.

Eventually it was unlawful to have ponies down the pits. After this law came along, when the ponies came to the surface, they suffered terribly with the brightness of the sun and they even got sunburned. They had been down below far too long, and by bringing them to surface, even that was cruel.