Genealogy Forum UK

I took my "children" to see The Miners' Hymns tonight.
There is a trailer here http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/20 ... on-trailer

I was very moved by it, especially to begin with. It is a sort of arty-documentary film, starts off with arial footage around Durham showing where a colliery used to stand - one is now now Asda. There was a greats sense (for me) of a world that is lost, and I had mixed emotions when there was archival footage of hand-hewing coal. It was a terrible working life for the men - still must be if you think of the Welsh disaster. On the other hand I felt that we have lost so much a long the way.
There was footage from the 1984 strikes too, and the preparations for them - riots have changed a lot since then too! It ended the way it began showing the Stadium of Light and somewhere else that used to be pits. The old footage was a bit jumbled together with no way of dating it except by insider knowledge or by guessing based on the fashion. Whatever happened to hats? Seas of faces all framed by hats!

I wanted my kids to see it since they have no idea what coal mining entailed. My dad started down the mine at 16, and his father was a miner all his working life. My other grandfather was a lead-miner. So I know what a tally was for, and how a safety lamp works. And we always had "pit towels" at home - my first matching set was given to me when I was 22! Even though my dad moved to a desk job and then teaching I feel that mining is in my background. I wonder if kids in the UK would even recognise coal?

The film had good and bad points. I liked the music for the most part but my eldest found it very simple - don't know who made her a music critic! If it comes up on tv then you could do worse than watch it.

On Friday I went to see a new Wuthering Heights film, also on at the festival. It was pretty bad. Rotten acting and camera work. It did leave me determined to dig out the book though, haven't read it for a long long time and I 'm pretty sure that that there was no no necrophilia in it

No I don't remember that either in the book wuthering Heights

what is the book pearls before swine?

What happened to the hats? They were used to keep the lice from jumping onto others and hide the fact that shampoo hadn't been invented

I think what we lost is a sense of work ethic. A fair days pay for a fair days work.

I would love to see some good documentaries on the transition to the industrial revolution. My Shropshire relatives turned from Game Keepers and Foresters to miners and nailers in a single generation.

I reckon kids need to experience something before they fully understand. In Victoria we have Sovereign Hill where kids can dress up in mid 19th century clothes, attend an authentic school for the day, go into real gold mines and do real gold panning.

It would be a bit dangerous to send them down a coal mine I suppose. Or get them to work in a textile factory with the looms clattering away.

I agree with what Mark says, the idea of a fair days pay for a fair days work has largely disapeared. We could probably discuss whether or not they got a fair days pay, but it's total reversal of some peoples way of thinking today - that the state should provide even for those who can't be bothered to do it themselves.
I've been down a few mines in wales, although not coal mines -mainly slate mines and a copper mine as well. Although they can never replicate the conditions the miners work in, it does give an idea. I can't imagine what it must be like when the word goes out that there's been an accident, and the wives didn't know if their husband or son was involved or not - and as Gardener says, it's still the case today.

most of that clip looks like it was taken at the durham miners gala still goes on today and they roll out the old pit lodge banners still

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham_Miners'_Gala

Another death in the mines yesterday...North Yorkshire this time.
Years ago I went to Beamish museum up here and you can go in a mine, bent double to get in it. Terrible working conditions really but thats what they had to keep the family, things werent as advanced as they are now.
Also not many mines left now. What were thriving communities are not much more than derelict ghost towns with problems. So very sad.

Id like to watch that film
Jo