Who Do You Think You Are? genealogist Laura Berrydigs up records for researching your coal-mining ancestors
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM’s) bitterly divisive 1984–1985 strike. It’s a timely reminder of how hard our forebears fought to scratch a living both under and above ground at collieries that dotted the industrial landscape from the Highlands down to Dover.
Despite the history of coal mining in Britain stretching back hundreds of years, with more than one million workers employed by the early 20th century, locating surviving employment records for any era is not straightforward. You stand a better chance if your ancestor worked for the National Coal Board when the industry was nationalised between 1947 and 1994 (the NCB became the British Coal Corporation in 1987). Employment records, medical-history
cards and notices of accidents or dangerous incidents for that period were centralised and might be obtained from Iron Mountain Records Management, although the archive is not open to the public (see ‘Resources’, page 36). If an ancestor continued to be employed after the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme (MPS) was introduced in 1952, then the MPS might retain historic records (see mps-pension.org. uk) but a National Insurance number would assist with any of these searches.
Many records created by the NCB are held by The National Archives (TNA) at Kew in the series COAL, although these deal primarily with the administration of mine workings. That said, reports on explosions and accidents even before nationalisation are in series HO (Home Office) and POWE (Ministry of Power) – consult TNA’s research guide at nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/mines-mining. Some NCB records were dispersed to county record offices, like the collection at Glamorgan Archives, which includes guides to using pithead baths and documents that set the scene for life in particular collieries both during and before nationalisation (https://glamarchives.gov.uk/blood/).
Union Magazine
Some issues of the NCB’s magazine Coal from 1947-1960 are on the website of the National Coal Mining Museum for England in Overton, West Yorkshire (ncm.org.uk) at resources.ncm.org.uk, with a regular feature ‘Pit Profile’ illustrating members of local communities. The museum’s librarians can also help you research your mining kin.
Nearly 48,000 ‘Bevin Boys’ were conscripted from all over the c
