Sid Bailey

Cortonwood Colliery - Closed October 1985

I was on the day shift when news came underground that the pit was closing. It was a big shock for everybody; the powers that be felt it was the right pit to shut at that time, and then we learned there was going to be more pits shut of course, and there were. It was said there was going to be twenty pits, but there were far more than twenty pits in the country that closed at the finish. It was very sad; I was expecting to stop in mining until I retired.

I didn’t expect the pits to close; it’s not a thing that I thought about. We knew we had got to move on, we knew we had to earn a living, and that’s what we did. We got some redundancy money, but that soon went when you’re not getting a wage in. Some of the older men found it a bit difficult, because lets face it, people didn’t want older men without any specific skills.

In the pit you built up some very good friends. Your safety depended on everybody else. If you saw anybody in difficulty, everybody took time to help out. It was fantastic, I enjoyed working in the pit, but when we came out, it was a different world and you just had to adapt, and there was no two ways about it.