Lofthouse Colliery Disaster
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The Lofthouse Colliery disaster was a
mining accident A mining accident is an accident that occurs during the process of mining minerals or metals. Thousands of miners die from mining accidents each year, especially from underground mining (hard rock), underground coal mining, although accidents al ...
in Lofthouse, in the
West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire was one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the riding was an administrative county named County of York, West Riding. The Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, lieu ...
,
England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
, on Wednesday 21 March 1973, in which seven mine workers died when workings flooded.


Disaster

Lofthouse Colliery was in Lofthouse Gate, close to Outwood in the Stanley Urban District, where many of the colliers lived. The village, to which the colliery was adjacent, now falls within the Ardsley and Robin Hood ward of the City of Leeds metropolitan borough but with a Wakefield postal address (WF3). A new coalface was excavated too close to an abandoned flooded 19th-century mineshaft. The sudden inrush of of water trapped seven mine workers below ground. A six-day rescue operation succeeded in recovering only one body, that of Charles Cotton. The location of the flooded shaft was known to
National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "ve ...
(NCB) surveyors but they had not believed it to be as deep as the modern workings.
British Geological Survey The British Geological Survey (BGS) is a partly publicly funded body which aims to advance Earth science, geoscientific knowledge of the United Kingdom landmass and its continental shelf by means of systematic surveying, monitoring and research. ...
records indicated that the flooded shaft did descend to the same depth but the NCB neglected to check these records.


Legacy

The incident led to the Mines (Precautions Against Inrushes) Regulations 1979 (PAIR), requiring The response of
Arthur Scargill Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British trade unionist who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. He is best known for leading the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike, a major event in the history o ...
, a compensation agent in the Yorkshire NUM, is credited with boosting his popularity with the Yorkshire miners and helping his election to the post of president of the Yorkshire Area NUM later in 1973. He accompanied the rescue teams underground and was on site for six days with the relatives of the seven deceased. At the enquiry he used notebooks of underground working from the 19th century retrieved from the Institute of Geological Sciences in Leeds to argue that the National Coal Board could have prevented the disaster had they acted on the information available. Lofthouse Colliery closed in 1981. Many of the miners took transfers to the new Selby Coalfield.


Memorial

A seven-sided stone obelisk listing the names of the seven miners was erected in Wrenthorpe above the point where the miners were trapped. It is on the south side of Batley Road, opposite the junction with Wrenthorpe Lane at . The men who died were: *Frederick Armitage, 41 *Colin Barnaby, 36 *Frank Billingham, 48 *Sydney Brown, 36 *Charles Cotton, 49 (the only miner whose body was recovered) *Edward Finnegan, 40 *Alan Haigh, 30 Services and reunions were held in Wakefield and Wrenthorpe on the weekend of 23/24 March 2013 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the disaster.


See also

* Knockshinnoch Disaster * Quecreek Mine Rescue * The Price of Coal


References


External links


Rescuers recall missing Lofthouse Colliery miners
{{Coal mining in Yorkshire Disasters in Yorkshire History of West Yorkshire Lofthouse Colliery disaster Lofthouse Colliery disaster Lofthouse Colliery disaster Coal mining disasters in England 1970s in West Yorkshire Lofthouse Colliery disaster