TIME OUT

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 7th Year

Issue

Issue No.

8

Date Released

Apr 1954

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1ANTHRACITE FIELD
2. 2TIME OUT
3. 3BOWHILL ON TOP
4. 4IDEAS MAN

Story

Story No. within this Issue

2 / 4

Summary

BFI synopsis: Relaxations of pit ponies. The Turner family in Yorkshire and their care of pit ponies. Gives detailed description of the care of pit ponies as laid down in legislation and how they are retired from coal service
NCB Commentary - Within these four square miles of friendly Yorkshire countryside, the Turner family have been farriers and horsemen for nearly 200 years.
Eighty-four year old Mrs. Turner, mother of ten, numbers among her strapping Yorkshire sons Britain’s oldest colliery horseman. For 46 of his 59 years, Albert has been with the ponies at West Yorkshire’s lively Woolley Colliery.
To-day, despite increasing mechanisation, the COla Board’s 15,000 pit ponies still do useful work hauling the timber for underground repairs and maintenance. They are playing their part to help keep some of this underground.
A popular belief that Britain’s 15,000 pit ponies are maltreated or blind is untrue. No blind ponies are ever put to work in British pits. The 1949 amendment to the Coal Mines Act of 1911 provides for their welfare in great detail. Maximum hours of work are laid down for the miner he serves. If the miners work a five-day week, then the pony too has a free weekend. When a pit is closed for a miners’ holiday the pony also has a rest. No other horse working for its living is protected by such detailed legislation as the Coal Board’s ponies.
Maintaining the Turner tradition with their father is brother George and sons Harry, 36, and Desmond, 25. The sons work the shifts with the ponies below ground and run an underground stable. The days in a man’s working life can be spent in far less satisfying ways than this.
As part of their preliminary training before going underground, new four-year-olds are taught to walk between tub rails under the Coal Board’s supervision. A few weeks on the Turner diet and their coats will be silky and glossy.
When a pony comes to the end of his useful working life he is assured of an honourable retirement. This is Tom, age 33, the oldest retired pit pony in Britain. Should a pony be sold there is a risk that he may fall into unscrupulous hands. If no home can be found for him - and it must be a home that comes up to the highest standards - then he is humanely destroyed under the supervision of Coal Board officials.
In all the winds that blow Albert cares for his 25 retired veterans who have done between 15 and 23 years of useful work. Nobody wants to lise old friends. Here is Tommy who won a first at Maltby in 1953.
After shift the sturdy Turners sit around on stable chairs, ponder their ingenious stove, discussing by way of a change some of the finer points of equestriam form. We are proud, and the Turner family can be proud, of Albert’s 36 years at Woolley Colliery. His ponies are contributing their share in helping the Woolley man lift an average of 18 1/2 thousand tons of good West Yorkshire every week.

Researcher Comments

According to bfi records, the budget for this story was £75 1s, the actual cost was £72 15s 1d. Commentary recorded 8 March 1954.

Keywords

Horses; Mining

Locations

Yorkshire; England

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for Synopsis
Film User   Vol.8 No.95 September 1954, p436.
The National Archives COAL 32   /3 Scripts for Mining Review, 1949-1956

Credits:

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Director

John Reid

Sponsor

National Coal Board