Cultureshock

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Video transcript

Right, I’m Joseph Settrey from Rowlands Gill. I used to work at Marley Hill colliery, the last colliery I worked in. I was there for ten years. I was a composite worker, I could travel, and I could do any job that was given to us because I was trained up to be a one twenty years ago, when I first went into the pit more or less. Composite work means that you could handle cutters, means that you could do stone work, it meant that you could do repair work, anything that was going. I had quite a good time. Then I was on waffling, that meant you were loading coal onto the belt with a coal cutter in reverse. Instead of cutting the blade was loading the coals onto it. And then I went from there onto the plough and it was on the plough that I was working and I had been off work three days with a septic finger. I started work that day and I was drawing my first, drawing what we called chocks off. I pulled this chock, knocked it off and I had the roof all caved in on us. I was managing because I could my head up above all of it. It was my back and my legs that were hurt. I managed to scrabble myself out, lie down a bit and then I scrabbled off the face, into the tailgate, what we called the tailgate, that was a return airway. While I was there I stiffened up and I had to be taken out of the pit altogether.  I tried for two year to work back in the pit on a light job but every time there was something happening that I had to lift or pull it was upsetting me. I had the recordance in my back, my legs and what not. At the finish, from 1962, when I was hurt, and 1964 I had to go in front of the NCB doctor and he told me that I hadn’t to go into the pits anymore. So that was the finish of my work at Marley Hill colliery.