ABSTRACT

I lived in a place called Cudworth near Barnsley in the middle of the South Yorkshire coalfields. The collieries are virtually all around. My father worked at Grimethorpe Colliery which was a rather big one employing three thousand men or so. And that was the crux of the living really. If we had a full week’s work we were in clover. The atmosphere of the home was brought to life. It oozed out of the whole household that he’d come home with a good packet. We were able to buy things. You could sense my parents were happy. There wasn’t the friction. And then when trade was bad generally it got to a stage where collieries had to agree to work three days and shut down three days.