The Gresford disaster occurred on 22 September 1934 at
Gresford Colliery, near
Wrexham
Wrexham ( ; cy, Wrecsam; ) is a city and the administrative centre of Wrexham County Borough in Wales. It is located between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley, near the border with Cheshire in England. Historically in the count ...
,
Denbighshire
Denbighshire ( ; cy, Sir Ddinbych; ) is a county in the north-east of Wales. Its borders differ from the historic county of the same name. This part of Wales contains the country's oldest known evidence of habitation – Pontnewydd (Bontnewy ...
, when an explosion and underground fire killed 266 men. Gresford is one of Britain's worst
coal mining disasters: a controversial inquiry into the disaster did not conclusively identify a cause, though evidence suggested that failures in safety procedures and poor mine management were contributory factors. Further public controversy was caused by the decision to seal the colliery's damaged sections permanently, meaning that only eleven of those who died were recovered.
Background
The Westminster and United Collieries Group began to sink the pit at Gresford in 1908. Two
shafts
''Shafts'' was an English feminist magazine produced by Margaret Sibthorp from 1892 until 1899. Initially published weekly and priced at one penny, its themes included votes for women, women's education, and radical attitudes towards vivisection, ...
were sunk apart: the Dennis and the Martin. They were named after Sir Theodore Martin, the company chairman, and Mabel Dennis, wife of the company managing director Henry Dyke Dennis, who had ceremonially cut the first sods for each of the respective shafts. Work was completed in 1911. The mine was one of the deepest in the
Denbighshire Coalfield: the Dennis shaft reached depths of about and the Martin shaft about .
By 1934, 2,200
coal miner
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...
s were employed at the colliery, with 1,850 working underground and 350 on the surface. Three
coal seams
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron fro ...
were worked at Gresford across several sections:
#Crank (South-East and No. 1 North sections), a seam producing
high-quality household coal.
#Brassey (South-East and No. 1 North sections), a to seam delivering
harder 'steam' coal for commercial use.
#Main (Dennis, South-East and No. 1 North sections), a seam that produced softer
industrial coal.
Lying east of the
Bala Fault, the mine was extremely dry, unlike mines to the west of the fault, and was therefore prone to
firedamp
Firedamp is any flammable gas found in coal mines, typically coalbed methane. It is particularly found in areas where the coal is bituminous. The gas accumulates in pockets in the coal and adjacent strata and when they are penetrated the releas ...
. The Main Coal in particular, which made up most of Gresford's output, was "of a very gassy nature".
The explosion occurred within the main seam of Dennis. This section, which began more than from the shaft bottom, was mined down a shallow gradient following the 1:10 dip of the seam. At the time of the disaster Dennis was divided into six "districts": 20's, 61's, 109's, 14's, 29's, and a very deep area known collectively as the "95's and 24's". Most districts in Dennis were worked by the
longwall system where the coal face was mined in single blocks. Gresford was considered a modern pit by standards of the time and most districts in the Dennis section were mechanised except 20's and 61's, which were furthest from the main shaft (approximately ) and which were still worked by hand.
Evidence given at the inquiry into the disaster suggested there were a number of adverse conditions in the pit prior to the explosion. Firstly,
underground mine ventilation
Underground mine ventilation provides a flow of air to the underground workings of a mine of sufficient volume to dilute and remove dust and noxious gases (typically NOx, SO2, methane, CO2 and CO) and to regulate temperature. The source of ...
in some districts of Dennis was probably inadequate; in particular, the 14's and 29's districts were notorious for poor air quality. The main return airway for the 109's, 14's and 29's districts was said to be by and far too small to provide adequate ventilation. Secondly, working conditions in the deep 95's and 24's district were always uncomfortably hot. Thirdly, it was alleged, there were also numerous breaches of safety regulations leading to the districts being in an unfit condition to operate.
The disaster inquiry was told that one of the pit
deputies
A legislator (also known as a deputy or lawmaker) is a person who writes and passes laws, especially someone who is a member of a legislature. Legislators are often elected by the people of the state. Legislatures may be supra-national (for ex ...
, whose job was to oversee the safety of a district, admitted that he also carried out
shotfiring during his shifts, in addition to his other duties. It was revealed that he fired more charges during his shift than a full-time shotfirer could have safely carried out. The colliery had made an operating loss in 1933, and the pit manager, William Bonsall, is thought to have been under pressure from the Dennis family to increase profitability. Henry Dyke Dennis was reputed in the Wrexham district to be a forceful individual who had more control of the pit than the manager. Bonsall was not a trained mining engineer and at Gresford the role of mine agent, which would normally be held by a technically experienced person with authority to stand up to both manager and owners, had for some time been temporarily filled by the company secretary since the retirement of the previous agent Sydney Cockin. Gresford had previously had a good safety record, but there were suggestions that in the two years Bonsall had not had Cockin to help him the pit's management had come under increasing commercial pressure. Bonsall admitted he had spent little time in the Dennis section of the pit in the months before the disaster, as he was overseeing the installation of new machinery in the "Slant", an area in the South-East section. Work on improving the Dennis section ventilation had been halted, and the inquiry's chair later confessed to "an uneasy feeling that Mr. Bonsall was overridden" on the matter.
Explosion
On Saturday 22 September 1934 at 2:08 a.m. a violent explosion ripped through the Dennis section. The explosion started a fire near 29's district and blocked the main access road, known as "142's Deep", to all the section's other districts. At the time up to 500 men were working underground on the night shift with more than half in the affected areas. The rest were in the Slant district of the South-East section about from the explosion; many there were unaware for some time afterwards that a disaster had occurred.
In Dennis the night
overman, Fred Davies, who was on duty at the bottom of the main shaft, heard a crashing sound and was enveloped in a cloud of dust for around 30 seconds. When it cleared he telephoned the surface and told Bonsall, the manager: "something has happened down the Dennis. I think it has fired." Bonsall immediately went into the mine to try to establish what had occurred. At approximately 3.30am the afternoon shift overman, Benjamin Edwards, reported that parts of the Dennis main road were on fire beyond a junction, known as the Clutch, where the haulage motors were located, and that a large number of miners were trapped beyond the blaze. Meanwhile, the shift that was working the Slant was ordered to the pit bottom and told to get out of the mine.
Only six men had escaped from the Dennis section, all of whom were working in 29's district: Robert (Ted) Andrews, Cyril Challoner, Thomas Fisher, David Jones (the district's night shift deputy), Albert (Bert) Samuels, and Jack Samuels. Some of the group were sitting taking a mid-shift break about north of the Clutch when the initial explosion happened. Jack Samuels, in his testimony at the inquest, described hearing a "violent thud
..followed at once by dust" while at the face and commenting "that's the bloody bottom gone". By the "bottom", Samuels clarified that he meant 14's district, which lay below them. A colleague advised them to leave the district via the "wind road" which was the 29's air
return drift. Samuels told a further 30 men working in the 29's district to follow. But as the six-man lead group went ahead attempting to fan the air to mitigate the effects of the deadly
afterdamp
Afterdamp is the toxic mixture of gases left in a mine following an explosion caused by methane-rich firedamp, which itself can initiate a much larger explosion of coal dust. The term is etymologically and practically related to other terms for u ...
, they soon realised the other miners had not followed them. Jack Samuels described how Jones repeatedly fell back, commenting he was "done", but Samuels told him to "stick it" and shouldered the deputy up a ladder; Samuels was commended at the inquest for his bravery and leadership of the group. After a long and difficult escape up 1:3 gradients, several ladders, and past rockfalls, the six miners eventually rejoined the Dennis main road and met Andrew Williams, the under-manager, who along with Bonsall had immediately descended the Dennis main shaft on being notified of the explosion. Williams took David Jones and went on towards the Clutch, while the remaining five went to the pit bottom and safety.
Beyond the Clutch, Williams found three falls in the main haulage road. Once he got past them he discovered a fire had started about 20 yards before the main entrance to 29's district, blocking escape from the districts further inbye, and immediately sent back for men and materials to fight it. The evidence of Williams, Bonsall and Ben Edwards, who all saw the fire at this critical point, differed on how large it was: Bonsall thought they could not get close enough to it to fight it, but Edwards, who was able to view the burning spot directly, said that it did "not seem much of a fire", and the final report of the inquest was inconclusive as to whether the fire could have been put out at this stage if better equipment had been to hand. Williams and the overman Fred Davies made an initial attempt to get up to the fire using breathing apparatus, but were driven back by fumes.
Rescue attempts
Shortly before dawn, volunteers began entering the pit with
ponies
A pony is a type of small horse ('' Equus ferus caballus''). Depending on the context, a pony may be a horse that is under an approximate or exact height at the withers, or a small horse with a specific conformation and temperament. Compared ...
to tackle the fire and help clear debris. The area's trained mine rescue teams were alerted, though there were delays in doing so which were later suggested to reflect management disorganisation. In the interim many volunteers from the area's mines were sent below to assist: a manager from another colliery, sent down at about 4:30 am, described his attempts to extinguish the fires. Six dead miners, all men who had been working near the Clutch, were soon brought to the surface. By 5:00 am the Gresford rescue team was already in the pit
and some of the teams from the neighbouring
Llay Main Colliery were at the surface, though they grew increasingly frustrated while waiting to be called down.
At 8:40 am, the 18-man Llay team finally received a call down the pit and went in accompanied by a Gresford miner who was to show them the way. In a somewhat disorganised fashion John Charles Williams and his two rescue men making up the No. 1 Llay team, along with a Gresford rescue man W. Hughes, were instructed by the Gresford staff then below ground to check the mile-long return airway of the 20's district. Bonsall later stated that his intent had only been that the team establish the atmosphere in the return: he claimed that his order had been "not to go in until they got definite instructions from me, because what I had in my mind was that it would be charged with carbon monoxide, and I did not want them to go through that because there would not be the slightest chance of getting men back through it." The instruction was, however, misinterpreted by a deputy as meaning that the team should physically enter the return; accordingly the rescue team entered the airway using breathing apparatus, despite the fact that their
canary died instantly. Williams, the team's leader, ordered them back when after several hundred yards after the airway ahead narrowed to by 3 ft and less. Two of the team then in Williams' words "seemed to get alarmed" and collapsed, possibly after removing their nose clips; Williams then tried dragging a third team member for over towards safety before being overcome himself by poisonous gases. Williams would be the only survivor; he was said by his family to be the man who later wrote the anonymous
broadside ballad
A broadside (also known as a broadsheet) is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between th ...
"The Gresford Disaster", which was highly critical of the mine's management.
Despite the fact that the carbon monoxide levels in the 20's return suggested that no-one further inbye could be left alive, rescue efforts became focused on trying to fight the fire at 29's Turn, using sand, stone dust, and extinguishers. The miners trapped in the most northerly districts, the 20's and 61's, would have been more than on the other side of the fire, and rockfalls at the entrance to the 29's soon made it clear there was little chance of escape for the men trapped in the affected districts. As the falls were levelled, the fire become more severe: Parry Davies, captain of the Llay No. 2 rescue team, described the whole end of the level as "one mass of flame, the coal sides of the roadway, burning in one white mass, and the more stones we moved to one side, the more air we put on to the flames
..It was most peculiar to see the flames from that fire, all the colours of the rainbow, a sight which I will never forget."
By early Saturday morning large crowds of concerned relatives and off-duty miners had gathered silently at the pit head awaiting news. Hopes were raised in the evening when rumours began circulating that the fire in the Dennis main road was being brought under control; families waiting at the surface were told rescue teams would soon be able to reach the miners in the 29's, the nearest district beyond the Clutch.
However, by Sunday evening it became clear that conditions in the pit had become extremely hazardous. Fire took hold in 29's haulage road as well as 142's Deep, and the rescue teams were withdrawn as further explosions took place behind a heavy fall on the far side of the fire. Relatives were told the shafts into the Dennis section would be capped because no one could have survived and it was far too dangerous to try to recover any further bodies. The final man to leave the pit, John McGurk, president of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation, commented "there is no chance that any man is alive. I have been down in pits after ten explosions, but I have never seen anything like this. From the point where the fire is raging for twenty yards the stones are red-hot".
More explosions continued to occur within the pit over the next few days. On 25 September, a surface worker named George Brown became the disaster's final victim when he was killed by flying debris after one blast blew the cap off the Dennis shaft.
Recovery efforts
In total, only 11 bodies (eight miners and the three rescue men) were ever recovered from the mine. Inquests recorded the cause of death as
carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, poisonous, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the simple ...
poisoning. The mine shafts remained sealed for six months, after which unaffected districts were gradually re-entered. Recovery teams first entered the pit, using breathing apparatus, on 7 March 1935. The damage caused by explosions and by the water directed down the pit was severe, and efforts concentrated on building stoppings so that fresh air could be readmitted to the pit. In May, Parry Davies, captain of the Llay Main No. 2 rescue team, accompanied by two inspectors and a Ministry of Mines doctor, entered into the 20's return airway to recover the body of John Lewis of
Cefn-y-Bedd, one of the members of the No. 1 team killed in the initial rescue attempts. By July, a party of men using breathing apparatus had proceeded 700 yards beyond the stoppings into the Dennis section as far as the top of the haulage road of the 142's Deep, though they found no trace of any of the missing miners. Within a matter of months, normal ventilation was restored to the Slant section: this work was, to that date, the first ever reopening of a pit by men working in an irrespirable atmosphere. However, after retrieving air samples from beyond the permanent stoppings, the mining inspectors refused to allow recovery teams to go further into the Dennis districts to retrieve bodies, despite calls from the workers themselves that they should be allowed to do so. Dennis was never reopened; the bodies of the remaining 254 victims of the disaster would be left in the sealed districts.
Inquiry
By the end of September 1934, 1,100 Gresford miners had signed on the
unemployment
Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the refere ...
register. Relief funds were set up by the
Mayor of Wrexham
The mayor of Wrexham is the civic figurehead and first citizen of the city of Wrexham, and Wrexham County Borough in the north of Wales. The position is elected by members of Wrexham County Borough Council at their annual meeting, and today, hold ...
, the
Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshire, and the
Lord Mayor of London
The Lord Mayor of London is the mayor of the City of London and the leader of the City of London Corporation. Within the City, the Lord Mayor is accorded precedence over all individuals except the sovereign and retains various traditional pow ...
. Their efforts raised a total of more than £580,000 for the dependants of the victims .
![Stafford Cripps 1947](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Stafford_Cripps_1947.jpg)
On 25 October 1934 the official
inquiry opened at Church House on Regent Street in
Wrexham
Wrexham ( ; cy, Wrecsam; ) is a city and the administrative centre of Wrexham County Borough in Wales. It is located between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley, near the border with Cheshire in England. Historically in the count ...
. It was chaired by
Sir Henry Walker, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Mines, who had himself been in the pit during the rescue attempts. The miners, through the
North Wales Miners' Association, were represented by
Sir Stafford Cripps
Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (24 April 1889 – 21 April 1952) was a British Labour Party politician, barrister, and diplomat.
A wealthy lawyer by background, he first entered Parliament at a by-election in 1931, and was one of a handful of La ...
; the mine owners, mindful of the fact they could face criminal charges, hired a formidable legal team including
Hartley Shawcross
Hartley William Shawcross, Baron Shawcross, (4 February 1902 – 10 July 2003), known from 1945 to 1959 as Sir Hartley Shawcross, was an English barrister and Labour politician who served as the lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg War ...
. Two mining assessors, one approved by the miners and the other by the colliery management, were also appointed to assist Walker and the inquiry. Local interest in the inquiry was enormous: as time went on the colliery officials called as witnesses faced increasing hostility from the public gallery, to the degree the atmosphere began to affect the quality of their evidence. The inquiry was marked by sensational allegations about the conduct of both sides: it was claimed that the deputies had after the accident held meetings together with the inspectorate, leading to a protest by miners, and there were several comments that the unions had paid miners to give evidence, causing an uproar in court.
The miners' legal representatives presented several theories at the inquiry as to cause of the explosion. Evidence had rapidly emerged that for much of the time, and especially during the night shifts, the pit was not under the direct supervision of the under-managers and manager but was effectively run by the colliery officials – the overmen and deputies or 'firemen' – and often by the deputies alone. While the deputies called to give evidence all claimed the pit was safe, miners alleged that the deputies had actively encouraged unsafe working, and many said that the deputies ignored complaints about safety: one claimed "if you talked to a fireman it was like talking to a
prop
A prop, formally known as (theatrical) property, is an object used on stage or screen by actors during a performance or screen production. In practical terms, a prop is considered to be anything movable or portable on a stage or a set, distinc ...
". Cripps said he believed an explosion was triggered on 142's Deep near to 95's district by shotfiring near a main airway, noting that the explosion had occurred about the time the 95's night shift deputy, Sam Matthias, would have arrived at this point. The blast had ignited a pocket of
firedamp
Firedamp is any flammable gas found in coal mines, typically coalbed methane. It is particularly found in areas where the coal is bituminous. The gas accumulates in pockets in the coal and adjacent strata and when they are penetrated the releas ...
which, Cripps suggested, had accumulated in the airway because of inadequate ventilation and the lax attitude of the management to monitoring gas levels, contrary to Section 29 of the
Coal Mines Act 1911. The heart of Cripps's argument was that the mine's management had focused quite calculatedly on maximum production, and that the deputies had accordingly been encouraged to ignore safety regulations. While the regulations also gave individual miners safety responsibility, many said in evidence that they were unwilling to speak out for fear of victimisation at the hands of the deputies, or that they would lose their jobs.
The assessor approved by the miners,
Joseph Jones, also theorised that a large quantity of
methane gas
Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Ear ...
, which had accumulated at the coal face in the 14's district, might have been ignited through an accident with a
safety lamp
A safety lamp is any of several types of lamp that provides illumination in coal mines and is designed to operate in air that may contain coal dust or gases, both of which are potentially flammable or explosive. Until the development of effectiv ...
or from a spark from a mechanised coalcutter. Jones was sharply critical of the management, stating that 14's was a "veritable
gasometer
A gas holder or gasholder, also known as a gasometer, is a large container in which natural gas or town gas is stored near atmospheric pressure at ambient temperatures. The volume of the container follows the quantity of stored gas, with pressu ...
", that there had been "flagrant and persistent breaches of the Coal Mines Act and General Regulations" and that the deputy responsible for ordering the rescue men into 20's airway was "guilty of manslaughter". Both Cripps and Jones suggested the Inspectorate itself was partly culpable for the explosion through its failure to enforce the Regulations: Jones noted the inadequate work of the local and divisional inspectors, Dominy and Charlton, at Gresford in the months leading up to the disaster and Cripps argued the Inspectorate had an interest in turning a blind eye to safety failings. Cripps went so far as to describe Dominy's inspections as "an absolute farce" and commented that it was "pathetic that a person who answers questions like that should be in charge of the inspection of mines in a large area of the country".
The inquest was initially adjourned on 14 December 1934, pending reopening of the Dennis section to obtain further evidence. Although recovery teams wearing self-contained breathing apparatus re-entered the sealed pit in May 1935, both government inspectors and officials from the Westminster and United Collieries Group would not allow any further attempts to be made to access the Dennis section. Evidence of 'heating' in the air samples taken beyond the stoppings, and the consequent risks of restarting fires, were cited as the reason: Walker agreed, though at the time of writing his report he hoped "that this heating will subside in time and that then it will be safe to re-enter the Dennis Section".
As there were no other reports concerning the deeper parts of the section, the inquiry considered explanations presented by the legal representatives of the pit's management and by the inspectors. The divisional inspector, Charlton, countered the miners' theories by suggesting that firedamp had actually accumulated further up the Dennis main road just beyond the Clutch. This gas was ignited at the Clutch when a telephone was used to warn miners of the influx of firedamp. Shawcross suggested that the explosion might have been caused by the spontaneous heating of a pillar of coal, based on reports of a burning smell in the area of the Clutch prior to the disaster. Shawcross had been able to demonstrate that the evidence of the miners with respect to stone dusting on the main haulage roads was exaggerated or untrue, and used this to cast doubt on their reports of gas and dangerous shotfiring practices at the face. The assessor chosen by the mine owners,
John Brass, also argued that the explosion, judging by the positions in which the bodies of the haulage men were found, had taken place at the Clutch, and that the gas had come from a new drift being driven from there to 29's for ventilation. Brass dismissed the miners' testimonies of poor conditions in 14's as "extravagant and contradictory", claiming that the district's high productivity would have been impossible if lamps were constantly being extinguished by gas, and stating that witnesses had claimed to smell gas when "firedamp has no smell such as has been described".
A year before the inquiry published its conclusion, coal production resumed at Gresford from the South-East Martin section in January 1936.
In 1937 the inquiry published its findings. Despite being presented with evidence of management failures, a lack of safety measures, bad working practices and poor ventilation in the pit, Walker drew very cautious conclusions about the cause in his final verdict. This was largely because the two assessors chosen by the miners and by the pit's management, and the barristers representing them, had given widely different suggestions as to the source of the explosion; though Walker stated he had "grave suspicions" regarding shotfiring near an airway in 95's, the cause suggested by Cripps. Unusually, as neither Jones nor Brass agreed with Walker's findings, both appended individual reports to the main text.
Without any decisive evidence, Walker's conclusions did not attribute any outright blame or definitive cause for the disaster. But in a debate in the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
in February 1937 following the release of Walker's report, the politician
David Grenfell
David Rhys Grenfell, (16 June 1881 – 21 November 1968), sometimes known as Dai Grenfell, was a Welsh Member of Parliament. He represented the Gower constituency for the Labour Party from 1922 to 1959.
Early life
Grenfell was born on 16 Jun ...
condemned the management of the colliery because the miners' testimonies had told:
...of lamps having been extinguished by gas, blowing the gas about with a banjack, of protests and quarrels about firing shots in the presence of gas. There is no language in which one can describe the inferno of 14's. There were men working almost stark naked, clogs with holes bored through the bottom to let the sweat run out, 100 shots a day fired on a face less than 200 yards wide, the air thick with fumes and dust from blasting, the banjack hissing to waft the gas out of the face into the unpacked waste, a space 200 yards long and 100 yards wide above the wind road full of inflammable gas and impenetrable for that reason.
Later in 1937, legal proceedings were started in Wrexham's
petty sessions court against the pit manager, the under-manager and United & Westminster Collieries Limited, the owners of the mine. Aside from the evidence of poor working practices, it was discovered that Bonsall had after the accident instructed an assistant surveyor, William Cuffin, to falsify records of ventilation measurements during several weeks when none had actually been taken. However, the court dismissed most of the charges without the mine owners ever being called to give evidence. The only conviction against the management at Gresford Colliery was for inadequate record-keeping, for which Bonsall was fined £150 plus costs.
Permission to re-enter the Dennis section was never given, and no examination or inspection of the deeper parts of Dennis was ever undertaken. This decision was widely perceived by the public as a deliberate attempt by the mine owners and Inspectorate to cover up any evidence of their culpability in the cause of the explosion. The miners' unions continued to press for entry into the sealed districts to recover bodies, with Grenfell and senior union officials including
Herbert Smith and
Joe Hall of the
Miners' Federation of Great Britain
The Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) was established after a meeting of local mining trade unions in Newport, Wales in 1888. The federation was formed to represent and co-ordinate the affairs of local and regional miners' unions in Engla ...
volunteering to lead the recovery teams personally, but the matter was finally settled when the three Gresford rescue teams themselves said they would follow the Inspectorate's advice in the matter. It is probable that resentment at the dominance of the North Wales industry by Yorkshire, represented by Smith and Hall, played a part in their decision.
Legacy
![Gresford Memorial - geograph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Gresford_Memorial_-_geograph.org.uk_-_65630.jpg)
Bonsall was portrayed by Cripps and others as a ruthless and cynical manager, but researchers now think that he is more likely to have been a "weak man driven beyond his capabilities" whose evidence was affected by the extreme exhaustion and stress of enduring 4000 questions and 20 hours of cross-examination at the inquiry. One exchange between Cripps and Bonsall regarding the ventilation of 29's district largely destroyed the manager's credibility and left him in a state of near collapse. Bonsall was, however, effectively a substitute for the real target of the miners' anger, the owners of Gresford. By contrast there was widespread sympathy for Williams, the under-manager, despite him facing equally harsh questioning from Cripps. Williams was understood to have recognised the dangerous conditions on taking the job at Gresford and had begun to rectify them: he also had three sons working in the pit, giving him, it was suggested, a personal interest in its safety.
Cripps used the evidence obtained at the inquiry to call for
nationalisation of the coal industry. This eventually occurred in 1947 when the pit, and others like it, were taken over by the
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 ...
. As part of the takeover agreement, nearly all the operating records and correspondence relating to the private management of Gresford Colliery were deliberately destroyed by the trustee.
Gresford Colliery finally closed on economic grounds in November 1973. In the 1980s the site was redeveloped as an industrial estate. In 1982 a memorial to the victims of the disaster was erected nearby; it was constructed using a wheel from the old pit-head winding gear. The last direct link to the disaster, Mr Eddie Edwards, who began work in the mine aged 14, and who participated in the rescue efforts, died on 6 January 2016, aged 102.
Music
The disaster is commemorated by the
hymn tune "Gresford". Known as "The Miners' Hymn", it was written by a miner named
Robert Saint from
Hebburn
Hebburn is a town in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, England. It governed under the borough of South Tyneside; formerly governed under the county of Durham until 1974 with its own urban district from 1894 until 1974. It is on the sout ...
,
South Tyneside
South Tyneside is a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, North East England.
It is bordered by all four other boroughs in Tyne and Wear – Gateshead to the west, Sunderland in the south, North Tyneside to the no ...
. The tune remains popular with many colliery
brass bands, and is always played at the annual Miners' Picnics around the
North of England, especially at the
Durham Miners' Gala
The Durham Miners' Gala, founded by Pete Doherty, is a large annual gathering and labour festival held on the second Saturday in July in the city of Durham, England. It is associated with the coal mining heritage (and particularly that of miner ...
.
"The Gresford Disaster" is a folk song in 6/8 time which appears to have been published anonymously and distributed as a
broadside shortly after the colliery explosion. It has been widely recorded, including versions by
Ewan MacColl,
The Hennessys,
Alex Campbell and
The Albion Band
The Albion Band, also known as The Albion Country Band, The Albion Dance Band, and The Albion Christmas Band, were a British folk rock band, originally brought together and led by musician Ashley Hutchings. Generally considered one of the mo ...
. It is included in the
Roud Folk Song Index (no:3089), and is discussed by
Roy Palmer in his 1974 book ''Poverty Knock: a picture of industrial life in the nineteenth century through songs, ballads and contemporary accounts'' (despite being a 20th-century composition).
The song "The Colliers" on
Seth Lakeman
Seth,; el, Σήθ ''Sḗth''; ; "placed", "appointed") in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mandaeism, and Sethianism, was the third son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, their only other child mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible. Ac ...
's 2006 album ''
Freedom Fields
''Freedom Fields'' is an album by Seth Lakeman released twice in 2006. It is his third album as a principal performer. It is named after a park in Plymouth, England, where the Sabbath Day Fight during the Siege of Plymouth is commemorated.
T ...
'' is about the disaster.
See also
*
Senghenydd colliery disaster
The Senghenydd colliery disaster, also known as the Senghenydd explosion ( cy, Tanchwa Senghennydd), occurred at the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd, near Caerphilly, Glamorgan, Wales, on 14 October 1913. The explosion, which killed 439 mine ...
, a
firedamp
Firedamp is any flammable gas found in coal mines, typically coalbed methane. It is particularly found in areas where the coal is bituminous. The gas accumulates in pockets in the coal and adjacent strata and when they are penetrated the releas ...
explosion at the pit near
Caerphilly,
Glamorgan, killed 439 miners and one rescuer on 14 October 1913. It remains Britain's worst mining disaster.
Notes
References
Citations and bibliography
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*. Original Pitwork website now hosted by Durham Mining Museum
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*. Original Pitwork website now hosted by Durham Mining Museum
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External links
Mine Disaster In Wales (1934) news report about Gresford from
British Pathé Underground Plan of the Dennis Section, Gresford Colliery, September 1934Welsh Coal Mines website – details on Gresford and all the other pits in Wales
{{Authority control
1934 mining disasters
1934 in Wales
Coal mining disasters in Wales
Wrexham
History of Wrexham County Borough
1934 disasters in the United Kingdom
September 1934 events