A Wartime Bevin Boy

A Memory of Royston.

My introduction to the Monckton mining community began on a bitter cold March Monday morning in 1944.

The wartime Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin had decreed that I should become one of his boys.

So here I was at 5.30am on a Monday morning at the pithead baths arrayed in my work clothes and new boots with their shiney steel toecaps climbing the wooden steps to No One pit top.

The activity there was busy with queues of miners being searched and waiting their turn to enter the cage and the descent to the pit bottom. This was not for me, I had to do two weeks training on a cold draughty pit hill.

When coal winding began empty tubs were pushed into the cage to eject the tubs full of coal, quite monotonous work for an inexperienced lad of eighteen, the cold March wind blew, what a relief when snaptime came with a chance to get warmed by the biggest blazing coal brazier I have ever seen.

Then I becam a Dusteater!!!!!!!

If you like my story, tell me I have more.