Artist and coal miner Rod Thackray was co-owner of Ludworth Moor Colliery which was on the Mellor border with Derbyshire. Its underground operations closed in 1981 and open cast in 1983. Rod had also spent years researching local coal mines and talking to and recording stories from old miners who had worked the pits around Mellor.
Rod also famously documented his life as a miner through his artwork. Several of his sketches and paintings intriguingly feature a table leg that was used as a pit prop.
Ludworth Moor was actually several independent mines collectively known as Ludworth Moor Colliery. From 1932 until 1945, the northernmost drift mine was Mount View Colliery and managed by brothers Fred and Richard Massey. They had found an outcrop of coal while digging a pond on their father’s land near the junction of Sandhill Lane and Gun Road. Fred was an experienced miner who had worked in collieries in Staffordshire and so he managed the mining operations. Richard lived in a wooden cottage near to the entrance of the mine. Their relationship was notoriously turbulent.
Around 1936, as their drift mine extended below ground, more timber was needed for pit props to support the roof. Richard had been assigned to acquire the wood, but it didn’t arrive. Fred, along with a group of miners urgently needing the wood, went to Richard’s cottage where a heated argument ensued between the brothers.
Richard stormed off and Fred instructed his workers to get whatever wood they could. Richard’s large wooden dining table was smashed, the legs taken and repurposed as pit props. When the Massey’s finally closed the mine and sealed it up in 1945 the table leg pit prop was buried beneath Ludworth Moor.
However, in 1981 when Rod’s drift broke through into the Massey’s old workings the table leg pit prop was still there just as the Massey’s had left over 40 years previously. It remained in place as a functional pit prop until the underground workings at Ludworth Moor Colliery finally came to an end on the 18th of July 1981.
With the closure of the pit much of Rod’s mining memorabilia was donated to various museums. Sadly, Rod couldn’t remember which, and with the closure or reorganisation of various mining exhibitions Rod thought they and the story of the pit prop were lost forever.
However, on a recent visit to the Staircase House Museum in Stockport I was thrilled to see an exhibition of Ludworth Moor Colliery featuring some of the equipment Rod had used underground. But I was especially pleased to see prominently on display the Massey’s table leg pit prop. It had re-emerged for a second time and Rod was thankfully reacquainted with it again. Hopefully, it won’t now be lost for third time.
Listen to Rod describing the story below.
A short Summary of Ludworth Moor Colliery
Rod Thackray Paintings
Frank Pleszak's Blogs 