Figure 1: The Whitwick Colliery disaster, Leicestershire, 19th April 1898. Photo Credit – Coal Authority
Whitwick Colliery mining disaster 1898: A Mine-craft the Prequel project case study
19th April 2023 was the 125th anniversary of the 1898 Whitwick Colliery mining disaster, which claimed the lives of thirty-five miners and boys. It was commemorated by the Whitwick Historical Group at a special event held at Whitwick Park Hall on 22nd April 2023. Whitwick Colliery was one of six case studies for the 2023-24 Nottingham Trent University coal mining heritage project, ‘Mine-craft the Prequel: The Photographic Story of East Midlands Coal’.
Figure 2: Crowds gather at the pit head at Whitwick No. 5 pit awaiting news of the disaster. Photo Credit – Coal Authority
The Disaster
The disaster was caused by a ‘gob fire’ (a spontaneous outbreak in the colliery waste area) which spread through the underground working of the Upper Main seam at Whitwick No.5 pit on 19th April 1898. The victims were killed by carbon-monoxide poisoning. Remedial actions were taken to try to extinguish the fire, including reversing the colliery ventilation, but all to no avail and stoppings were erected to stave the fire of oxygen in an attempt to put it out. In effect this meant sealing some of the miners in the underground workings.
Figure 3: Map showing location of Whitwick No.5 pit and underground workings in relation to surface features. Photo Credit – Snibston Heritage Trust.
The mines rescue teams initially found nine bodies and another fourteen bodies were recovered between 28th December 1898 and 17th February 1899. Because of the impending danger to members of the mines rescue teams, twelve miners bodies were never recovered and tragically remain sealed in the underground working forever, becoming a permanent tomb.
Figure 4: Mr Brier’s horse drawn hearse’s at Whitwick Colliery following the mining disaster on 19th April 1898. Photo Credit – Coal Authority
Figure 5: Preserved horse drawn hearse used at the 1898 Whitwick Colliery disaster at Snibston Discovery Museum in 2010. The museum closed in 2016. Photo Credit – David Amos
Figure 6: Whitwick Colliery, Leicestershire, in 1986 just prior to closure. Photo Credit – South Derbyshire Mining Preservation Group
Remembering the Whitwick Colliery disaster
Whitwick Colliery finished production in early July 1986,159 years after the first coal was won. Along with other local collieries in north-west Leicestershire, it had one of the longest lives of any modern colliery (early19th century onwards) in Britain.
Figure 7: Former Whitwick miner, Roger Cornish, at Whitwick Retail Park, the former site of Whitwick Colliery, in June 2024. Photo Credit – David Amos
The site is now the Whitwick Retail Park, which includes a large Morrison’s supermarket. Roger Cornish, a former Whitwick miner and pitman poet, recalls the 1898 mining disaster in his poem, Whitwick Mining Disaster.
Roger Cornish recites his poem, Whitwick Mining Disaster, at the Whitwick disaster mining memorial at Hugglescote, Leicestershire, in June 2024. (2 mins, 29 secs)
Whitwick mining disaster – a poem by Roger Cornish
Six hundred meters below the Sausage
counter they quietly lay thirty-five
boys and men – miners – buried
in an unholy grave.
They built a supermarket on top of
them.
There were other supermarkets in the
area – but they needed another one –
here.
Six hundred meters below the frozen
peas and carrots are the old stables where the
pit ponies used to rest after a hard
shift pulling tubs of coal to the pit bottom.
The ponies fell where they worked with
their handlers – John Tugby just sixteen years old.
Fathers died trying to help their sons
escape the fire beneath the Fish counter.
Nineteenth of April eighteen ninety-eight.
Whitwick Colliery – the night shift where a
town
died in number five shaft.
Today –
laughing children dance around the old pit
wheel while under their dancing feet lay
buried a generation – lost for the price of
Coal.
Figure 8: The Whitwick disaster mining memorial at Hugglescote, Leicestershire, in June 2024. Photo Credit – David Amos
Whitwick Disaster Mining Memorial
A Whitwick Colliery disaster mining memorial was unveiled on a new housing estate at Hugglescote on 24th April 2022. It is situated on the surface near to the geographical location of the underground workings were the disaster occurred. Some of the nearby roads are named after victims of the disaster.
Figure 9: Plaque on the Whitwick mining disaster memorial commemorating the 35 miners killed in the 1898 mining disaster. Photo Credit – David Amos
Further information the Whitwick Colliery 1898 disaster
A Brief History of Whitwick Colliery 1827-1986, by J Knight, revised and reprinted 2021.
Banded Together: Leicestershire Worst Mining Disaster at Whitwick Colliery in 1898, by Whitwick Historical Society, 1997.
Whitwick Historical Group website at https://whitwickhistoricalgroup.co.uk/whitwick-colliery/
Coalville Heritage Trust website at https://www.coalvilleheritage.org.uk/history/whitwick-colliery-disaster-1898
Blog by David Amos
Mine2Minds Education
Posted by Mining Heritage admin – 23rd September 2024