Ray Plummer

Yorkshire Main - Closed October 1985

This is the number one shaft. Where my house is now, that was the car park for the canteen.

We always thought we would be back to work by Christmas, but it just went on and on. I was fortunate that my wife worked, which helped. I knew people who really struggled through it, living on food parcels and what people had given.

We never new the reason for closure, there was quite a lot of coal left. We thought we were closed as an example. When it closed they were still building a new washer. I was taking stuff of lorries which they had ordered and which they couldn’t cancel, then putting them on other lorries to be taken away. There must have been coal there if they were prepared to build a new washer, they’d put brand new headgear up a few years before, to go deeper with a bigger winding engine to take coal from a lower seam.

I’d prefer it if it was still a pit rather than a housing estate, and with the price of coal now I think they did make a mistake closing them all down. They closed too many too quick, and they can’t be opened again.