Research Projects

by George Muncaster

What follows are mostly my recollections of the Morrison Busty as it was in 1942 followed by recollections of events and developments between then and September 1959 when I left. Because they are memories, the sequence and time of events may not be entirely accurate and others who worked there will have seen things from a different perspective and would describe them differently.

The Baths

Craghead Colliery and Morrison Busty Colliery, both owned by Holmside and South Moor Collieries, Limited, were the only pits in the district, in 1942, which had pithead baths. Other pits had to wait until after Nationalisation.

The land was leased, by the Colliery Company, for one shilling per year [7] and the baths, erected by the Miners Welfare Committee, were handed over to the Trustees on 27th June 1936, one of the Trustees being Fred Wade. Following the ceremony those present were given the opportunity of going through the bathhouse and the following day the workmen were allowed to take their families to see it. There were lockers for 1000 men and 108 shower cubicles and men using the baths had to pay 6d per head per week [8].

The Heapstead

The Morrison Busty heapstead was a steel girder structure in-filled with brick at heap level and open below.

Coal was drawn from both the East Pit and West Pit shafts but the East Pit, drawing from the Busty seam, produced most coal. Both pits had single-deck cages for six 12-cwt tubs on two sets of rails with a maximum of 40 men when man-riding. At the beginning and end of each shift men were wound at their own shafts but during ‘coal-work’ anyone going up or down had to use the West Pit shaft, which drew coal from the Brockwell seam.

At bank, and at the shaft bottom, at the East Pit the tubs were pushed into the cages by rams, operated by compressed air, pushing on their axles. At the West Pit tub changing was done manually - hard work for the banksman who, twice for each cage load, had to push three full tubs out of the cage by pushing three empty ones in.

The full tubs (‘full uns’) gravitated to a gangway midway between the two shafts, performing a U-turn in doing so. Tubs from the West Pit, which was the upcast shaft, had first to pass through airlock doors. After running down the gangway they were retarded by compressed air-operated ‘squeezers’, then passed over a weigh bridge before going onto one of two ‘creepers’ which pushed the tubs by their axles up to the ‘tippler’ house.

From the top of the creepers they ran a short distance down to the ‘tipplers’. There were four tipplers, which turned the tubs upside down and emptied them onto ‘jigger’ screens - metal plates with holes in them, which moved forwards and backwards. The empty tubs (‘teum uns’) then performed another U-turn, and returned to the shaft by gravity.

Small coal passed through the screens onto a conveyor, which took it to the dry coal cleaner. Larger coal slid down the screens onto one of four picking belts where young lads or older men (usually unfit to work down the pit) picked by hand any stone mixed with the coal. From the picking belts the coal was transferred to 20-ton trucks standing below at what was referred to as the ‘wagon-ends’.

The Dry Cleaner

There were, in fact, two dry cleaners – the ‘raw coal’ cleaner and the “Coppee” cleaner (the manufacture’s name). Using vibratory screens to separate coal from stone the whole building shook and rattled and it was a noisy, filthy place. Busty and Brockwell coal was soft and vast quantities of coal dust were produced. The Morrison Busty cleaners seemed to be dirtier than most dry cleaners and coal dust was spread as far as Quaking Houses. The dry cleaners at the Louisa Pit and at Craghead Colliery, from a different manufacturer, were less of a nuisance. For the electricians the cleaners were probably the worst place at the pit. Once a week the switch-gear and motors had to examined and tested by whoever was in the 3.0 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift and the work involved going into places where the floor, walls, girders and machinery were covered in coal dust and blowing coal dust out of the motor windings and terminal boxes with a compressed air ‘hogger’ (hose).

Digitised George Muncaster

This is part of a series of projects, others are listed below:

Morrison Busty Colliery ( Part 1) - mainly memories

Morrison Busty Colliery ( Part 3 ) - power supply and power station

Morrison Busty Colliery ( Part 4 ) - underground

Morrison Busty Colliery ( Part 5 ) - the coal cutting machines

Morrison Busty Colliery ( Part 6 ) - modernisation on the surface

Morrison Busty Colliery ( Part 7 ) - references

Note: The views that are expressed on the website are the contributors own and not necessarily those of Durham County Council. This is a community website so no guarantee can be given of the historical accuracy of individual contributions