Astley Green Colliery Museum: Memories

Did you work down the mines or on the surface? Perhaps you lived in a coal mining community? Why not share your experiences with us, whether they be specific to Astley Green Colliery and village or elsewhere in the Lancashire Coalfield? Perhaps you have had stories passed down you would like to share.

Any information or recollections you can provide would be added to our archives to ensure that memories of life in the Lancashire Coalfield lives on, providing educational material for schools and additional interest for visitors to the museum. From time to time we will place a selection of these stories on the web site.

Please send your stories to: [email protected]

Frank Seddon was a miner from Tyldesley who spent most of his working life at Mosley Common Colliery. Like a number of other miners, he would put his thoughts and experiences into verse. The following poem is one of a number kindly submitted by his daughter. Click here to see our Poets' Corner site.

A MAN'S JOB

Not only on the battle field
Does a boy become a man.
But in the bowels of the earth,
Depending, on the fan.
No need to be a Grenadier
Or reach a certain age.
The young lad turns into a man
As he steps into the cage.

Where, in the caverns of the blind,
He battles for the coal.
And never stops to reason why,
As he gives his heart and soul.
Facing poverty and strife,
As only poor men can.
And working side by side with death,
The boy becomes a man.

Frank Seddon

ï¿½ 2001 to 2004 Astley Green Colliery Museum