The Maryhill colliery is situated at Harecastle, about three quarters of a mile north-east of from Harecastle Station, on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway line from Stoke to Manchester. The lessees are Harecastle Collieries Limited.
The Colliery has two inclined shafts about 25 yards apart, which commence at the surface in the outcrop of the Winpenny seam on the western flank of an anticline. The winding shaft follows the plane of the Winpenny seam to a depth on the incline of 45 yards from the surface. At this point the coal seam becomes vertical, but the shaft continues through the measures at the original inclination, viz., 60 degrees, to its present depth of 273 yards measured on the incline.
With the exception of a little work in the seam known as the Bowling Alley at some distance to the West of the shafts, and another seam to the East know as the Silver mine, operations have been confined to four seams, viz., in descending order, the Seven Feet Banbury, the Eight feet Banbury the Bullhurst and the Winpenny, all of which, so far as they had been proved and worked, lie at high inclinations. It is with the Eight Feet Banbury seam that this report is immediately concerned.
Plate 1 is a plan showing the shafts and cruts and that part of the workings in the Eight Feet Banbury seam at Maryhill with which this report is concerned, as well as workings in this seam in an abandoned colliery known as the Moss Pits lying to the West of Maryhill and to which further reference will be made in this report.
Plate 3 shows two sections across the measures in Maryhill on the lines AB and CD indicated on the plan. The accident which was the subject of this inquiry occurred in the workings of the lowest or No. 7 Level at a vertical depth of 207 yards from the top of the incline. The precise spot will be referred to in grater detail below. At the time of the accident the management of the mine was in the hands of an agent, Mr. JB Weir, 2ho also acted as certificated surveyor, and a manager Mr. Dalkin.
The mineral royalty, acquired by the present lessees of Maryhill Colliery in 1910, covers an area rather more than one mile square on the north-western border of the North Staffordshire coalfield. The eastern boundary of the square is formed by a pronounced north and south anticline, on the western flank of which the coal measures crop out against an exposure of Millstone Grit at the summit of a sharp ridge or saddle. For a distance of about 250 yards on the dip, the coal measures are highly inclined and the seams of coal are locally called "Rearers”. The workings of Maryhill have revealed that the strata in this belt of "Rearers” next to the out-crops are not only highly inclined but also severely distorted. So much so that the parts (see Section A.B. and C.D., plate 3) a seam of coal has been folded back on itself in the form of a letter "S”. Further west, the high inclination disappears and the measures are found lying comparatively flat but with considerable undulations and much cut up by faults. In this area of flat measures, three seams of coal, viz., The Seven Feet Banbury, the Eight Feet Banbury and the Bullhurst have been worked from two shafts, known as the Moss Pits, situated about 440 yards west of Maryhill Colliery. In 1896 the moss Pits were abandoned and dismantled and in 1898 plans of the workings were deposited at the Home Office in accordance with the provisions of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887. The abandoned workings became filled with water.
Although the usual "droppers" and small feeders of water common to the natural wet conditions at the Colliery were encountered prior to the inrush, nothing to cause alarm appears to have occurred until about 5.30 p.m. on January 17th. At that time four persons only were employed underground in the workings of the No. 7 level, viz., a fireman named Swithen Rowley and three workmen named, respectively, Leonard Archer, Albert Copeland and Jonas Brown.
In his evidence Rowley described how, at what was apparently the actual moment of the inrush, he and archer noticed a slight agitation in the air followed by the sound of a tub running at high speed. Almost immediately the tub appeared at the junction between the crut in which they were working and the Eight Feet Level. The tub was being forced along by the rush of water; Copeland was in it and was shouting to attract their attention.
Rowley and Archer ran to assist Copeland, the depth of the water in the road-way was about 6 feet high, and Copeland was assisted out of the tub, but by this time Archer had either been caught by , or thinking he was going towards safety, allowed himself to be swept along in the swirling waters towards the shaft bottom. He was not seen again.
In the local newspaper (Staffordshire Sentinel) it stated; Wonderful heroism was shown by Fireman Rowley, who assisted Copeland, for a long way up a steep incline, and then, realising that others might be descending the main shaft, handed his electric lamp to Copeland’s charge, told him to follow and went ahead in order to warn those at the pit-head that the pit was being flooded.
Copeland must have been trapped by the water and drawn into the pit, but Rowley had a miraculous escape. He had to crawl some hundreds of yards in darkness over a difficult course before he reached the surface, and when he got to the top he was practically exhausted. The water very soon rose to a depth of 217 feet in the pit-shaft and it is considered that there is no hope at all of recovering the missing men.
Apparently the disaster was due to water entering the Harecastle Pit from several disused pits which surround the Harecastle colliery. These disused pits, three in number, are full of water, and it was explained to a "Sentinel" representative that if the water from one of the pits was tapped, it would affect all three.
One of the workmen at the collieries said to the Sentinel "representative": "It is a good thing and a bad thing." He was referring to the fact that if the water had flooded the pit while the men were engaged on the day shift, the loss of life might have been terrible.
About 130 men are employed on the morning shift at the colliery, where only two shifts are worked. In the afternoon only a few men are employed on repair work, and it so happened yesterday afternoon, about 5.30, when the accident occurred, there were only these four men in the pit, under the direction of Rowley the fireman.
The Harecastle Colliery is probably unlike any in the district. The pit shaft is on an incline. Its depth is about 250 yards and there are three levels – Nos. 5, 6 and 7 a distance of about 70 yards dividing the last two. Even if the men had been working in No. 6 level they would soon have been trapped, for the water rose with amazing rapidity, indicating that in the vicinity of the colliery was a huge quantity of water, the existence of which was unknown.
As soon as news of the disaster was announced by Rowley, efforts were made to rescue the entombed men. The pit cage was lowered, but water was encountered about 70 yards from the bottom, rendering any possible chance of rescue by this route impossible. A dash was made for what was known as the "back-way", the route by which the ponies are taken, but there again water was encountered. Hundreds of people waited at the pit-head for news of the missing men. There were pitiful scenes, relatives waiting long hours hoping that their loved ones had not been engulfed by the rush of water There is now very little doubt that the men have perished. Mr.T.Bull His Majesty's Inspector of Mines and other mining officials visited the scene last night and again today, holding conferences with the Manager (Mr. W. Deakin) and other officials of the colliery.
Harecastle colliery stands in a bleak situation about half a mile from Kidsgrove. The workings have been there about 18 years. This morning the pumps were working, as they had been of course throughout the night, in an effort to keep the water down, and periodically examinations were made by descending the shaft. At one time the water was gaining on the pumps, but later had appeared to have found its level.
Day and night shifts are worked at the colliery and the men on the day shift had only left a few hours before the flooding occurred. At the colliery this morning there was an air of tragedy. Men gathered in small groups, talking of the sad fate of their comrades and marvelling at their own lucky escape. In conversation with a representative of the "Sentinel," the men could only take of the homes that had been stricken and the heroism of Rowley, though in their minds they realised their own good fortune in that the disaster occurred in the afternoon and not when the day or night shifts were in the pit.
All hope of pumping the water out of the flooded workings at the Harecastle Colliery and recovering the bodies of the three victims has been abandoned. The flooded area is two square miles in extent.
Those present at the Conference on Tuesday 5th February held at the Harecastle Colliery were; Mr. F. H. Wynne, H.M Deputy Chief Inspector of Mines, Mr. H. A. Abbotts Divisional Inspector; Mr. T. Boydell, Senior Inspector; Mr. S. Finney, Secretary and Agent; Mr. F. J. Hancock, President; and Mr. H Leese, Treasurer representing the North Stafford Miner' Federation; Mr. J. B. Weir, Agent of the Harecastle colliery; Mr. J. R. L, Allott and Mr. A. M. Henshaw, mining engineers of great experience in the district.
These gentlemen inspected the colliery plans and the practical and economic difficulties which would arise in any attempt to pump the water out of the flooded workings were pointed out to the representatives of the Miners' Federation.
It was computed it would take some years at least to reduce the water to such a level as to make it possible to explore the road-ways in which the bodies of the three victims are known to be supposed to be lying. There is a tremendous area of water-logged workings, all interconnected, so that it would be not only a question of pumping the feeder of the water, but also of reducing the water over a very wide area, the extent of which is calculated to be two square miles or so. The representatives of the Miners' Federation were satisfied as to the impracticability of pumping out the water and recovering the bodies.
The three men who lost their lives in the disaster
were;
Albert Copeland, age 57, a widower of 44
Chapel-lane, Harriseahead.
Leonard Archer, age 35, married of Black
St. Rookery Kidsgrove: and
John Brown, age 36 married, of
Third-avenue, Kidsgrove.
I thank the Mover of this Motion for putting it on the Order Paper, because by so doing he inveigled me into spending a week-end in much closer contact with the mining industry than I would perhaps have been able to achieve otherwise. I had with me two reports which probably have come into the hands of other Members during the last few weeks. These reports impressed me particularly because they refer to the Midlands area with which I have a close connection. One is the report concerning the accident at the Maryhill Colliery, Kidsgrove, North Staffordshire, on 17th January, 1929, and the other is the report on the fire at the Coombs Wood Colliery, Worcestershire, in Mar last. I was perturbed as an ordinary layman, as an ordinary worker if you like, by looking into the conditions under which these miners were working and were losing their lives. In the case of the Maryhill Colliery three men lost their lives because of an inrush of water from some old pit workings, and I discover in the report of the deputy chief inspector of mines the following paragraph which is to me, alarming: Although the actual cause of the accident is likely to remain unexplained several facts regarding plans of abandoned mines emerged upon which recommendations with a view to avoiding a similar accident in future can be made. That would not have been too bad if it had not been followed up by the statement that, although information as to old pit workings ought to be recorded under the Coal Mines Act 1911 yet in this case this information was so vague as to have little or no value from the safety point of view. In that case, as well as in the other to which I propose to refer, I feel that as the coal mining industry has been carried on for a very long time there must have been innumerable accidents regarding which the same report had to be made, and in regard to which it might be said that if only something had been commenced earlier, if only something had been done sooner, in all probability lives would have been saved. There must be a tremendous feeling of agony to the relatives of the victims of mine accidents in the thought of that ever present "if." If something had been done perhaps these bread-winners would not have been taken.