A KINGDOM OF Coal

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 18th Year

Issue

Issue No.

1

Date Released

Sep 1964

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1PARIS PARLEY
2. 2144 MINUTES HARD
3. 3A KINGDOM OF Coal

Story

Story No. within this Issue

3 / 3

Summary

BFI synopsis: Sid Chaplin, author and miner, presents a view of Co. Durham, past, present and future.
NCB Commentary - This is the county where I was born - County Durham - a tight little kingdom which stretches only thirty miles from the mountains to the sea.
A Kingdom of coal.
From Roman times armies marched and counter-marched over all this land. Now the army is down below, under our feet. That pithead gear that winds down there is a strongpoint in the war for coal. All down the coast are others, facing the sea like fortresses. Big modern, streamlined.
When I was a boy ... it was all so much different.
The band room is Shildon, the town where I was born. In this little room they built some of the first locomotives. The men who toiled at their hand-driven lathes were rehearseing as well - rehearsing a way of living which has spread to the farthest ends of the earth.
But in the beginning the iron horses were built not for passengers but for pits. Sometimes there’d be a big pit at the end of the line. Sometimes just a tiny pitshaft or a drift, just a hole in the ground, the kind we call a Dickie Pit. Little pits but with a lot of coal right on the doorstep. They bred comradeship as well as skill, loyalty as well as discipline.
From the village all roads led to the Dickie Pit. A church and two chapels, two pubs and a club and seven little streets. The houses all were cosy. Two rooms up and two rooms down. A backyard where bath-tins were hung between shifts. A boiler with a brass top beside the fire.
The river went all around the village and the pit. There were big rocks right down to the water; we called it the drowning pool but that didn’t stop the swimming, the search for fish, the playing around with sticks and stones.
These days are long gone. Now the Dickie Pit is closed. All that’s left inside the token cabin is an old chair. And that used to be the pumping station. Here were the railway tracks. Putters and hewers walked along here day in and day out. And from here once came the coal which was the life blood of the village. We used to think that the Dickie Pitt would go on for ever - like the river beside it. We didn’t know what our fathers knew in their aching bones. Low workings. Thin seams. And so it was the end of the line for the old Dickie Pit.
But not for it’s men. The river flows on to the sea. The men move Eastwards to the big new collieries and the deep, rich seams, where the old skills and traditions can be married to new toold and new machines. Men must follow the coal. Coal for the blast and coal for the home, for the power station and for the factories, - coal from County Durham. Cargoes for parts from Scandinavia to Portugal and Red Sea. Out wit the tide and over the bar, over the workings far down beneath the grey North Sea.
The Dickie Pit has gone but it’s men and it’s spirit are still at work.

Keywords

Mining; History and archaeology; Writers; Scenery and travel

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
The National Archives COAL 32   /13 Scripts for Mining Review, 1960-1963

Credits:

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Production Co.

National Coal Board Film Unit

Presenter

Sid Chapin