Easington Pit Disaster 60th Anniversary
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Description
29th May 2011 marked the 60th Anniversary of the Easington Colliery Pit disaster, in which sparks from a coal cutter ignited a pocket of 'Fire Damp' gas causing a massive explosion that claimed the lives of many miners, including that of Emmerson Cain, 62, my Great-grandmother's cousin. I put this video together a number of years ago. The singer is North East folk legend, Ed Pickford, who also wrote The Oldest Swinger in Town (which was a hit for Fred Wedlock). The pictures are from Eastington District Council's Past and Present Archive which is well worth a visit. If You Have a Little More Time to read: STRANGE COINCIDENCES. On the 40th Anniversary of the disaster I was a young reporter for the Peterlee Times and Easington was on my patch. Getting people to talk about the disaster was a tough assignment. The loss of 83 men in a small village in one disaster is a 'nuclear' emotional event and it will take generations for the radioactive feelings released to begin to cool. I talked to my Grandmother about it and she said: "You do know one of our family died in the explosion?" I had grown up on Teesside, 20 miles and a whole dimension away, from what the old people called "The Pit Country" and knew nothing of the family link. (She also told me that earlier in the century, my Great-great-grandmother, had died while visiting Easington and had to be buried there as the family could not afford to bring her home). So I went to the mass grave in Easington and found the stone of Emmerson Cain. The family link made talking to people in Easington much easier. In 1994 I left the North East and spent 16 years living in Sheffield, where I ended up lecturing in Journalism at Sheffield Hallam University. I was forced to retire after I developed M.E., something that also led to the break-up of my marriage. I moved back to Teesside just before Christmas. On Monday, I bought a copy of the Northern Echo, to read the report on the 60th Anniversary of the Disaster, only to find it had been written by a journalist I had taught in Sheffield... -
Owner
spratmackrel -
Source
Flickr (Flickr) -
License
What does this mean? Attribution-ShareAlike License
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Further information
Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30591976@N05/5786257787/
Resource type: Image
Added by: Simon Cotterill
Last modified: 7 years, 11 months ago
Viewed: 917 times
Picture Taken: Unknown -
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