Ken Wilkinson

Askern Colliery - Closed 1991

Askern was just one big industrial area with a housing estate tagged onto it. Mountains of coal everywhere, canteens and the baths where men used to get washed at the end of the shift. The whole place was a pretty dirty, pretty grim place to live in. I often remember a train journey from Selby in the North, to Doncaster in the South and it used to run along past Askern, and I always remember these kids saying “oh daddy, what on earth is that dirty thing on that hillside over there?” They’d obviously never seen a pit in their life before, and I was sat there thinking “bloody hell, that’s where I work – and a lot of people live”. I’ll always remember that, it was such a grim place.

We’d lost the strike, and the strike was about closing pits. It had been bandied around that Askern would close, and it did. Photography was really the only other thing I knew.
I got accepted at Newport college and put my notice in. I worked nights for four consecutive weeks and finished on Saturday morning. I travelled down to Newport on the Sunday, and on the Monday morning I was being taught photography by David Hurn, Magnum photographer, which was a bit of a contrast from working on a coal face.