Durham Mining Museum has inherited and proudly displays centuries of mining history from the whole North East of England, writes volunteer community journalist, Anton Weineck. With ex-pitmen as volunteers and rooms full of artefacts it’s a lively place for old stories appearing closer than expected.
Three rooms in Spennymoor Town Hall seems like not much, but in those three rooms, centuries of mining history are being preserved. The museum displays everything the North East has to offer in mining history – and it’s history you can literally touch. If it’s not the amount of old mining equipment everybody can try on, it’s the volunteers, former miners, who take you down the mine: ”I started when I was 16,” recounts Michael. “It was a real culture shock. I never heard a woman swear until I went to the pit canteen.”
Capture the culture
The museum tries to be a place for everyone: “We get a lot of people from around the world who are tracing their history and their ancestries,” says Debbie Connell, Spennymoor Town Council’s Community and Culture Manager and Curator. Visitors from Australia, the US or Germany are listed in the big black visitors book at the entrance. Often they come as part of the global mining community and with an agenda: They want to know about their ancestor’s way of life. With hundreds of artefacts on site and more than 100,000 linked websites online, the museum has a big archive to find out about those stories. Sometimes people just pop in and donate old family pieces or come around and have a chat – in whichever way, stories and culture are being prevented. The three rooms don’t just capture things that have gone past, they capture a community.
Pits for the kids
To keep the cultural thought alive, the engagement especially reaches out to younger generations: “I think it’s important that the kids remember,” Michael says just after a school class left the museum. Michael became one of the nearly ten volunteers a few years ago. For him it’s about giving something back to the community: “I genuinely do enjoy telling the children what happened down the coalmine. “About 150 years ago children their age worked down there.”
In the basement of the town hall the museum has created a small mine orientated on original scales. Together with descriptions of ex-pitman, Tony, it makes children feel like they are truly crawling underneath the earth: “You could have up to 200 people working on the coal phase,” he explains. “It was quite dusty, dangerous and there was a lot of noise.” The kids get equipped with helmets and lamps and work themselves through the darkness: “It’s those experiences out of the classroom that gives them something to remember,” Debbie Connell adds.
Once a pitman, always a pitman
When talking about the museum’s meaning, Debbie highlights the effects of the past on today’s life in mining communities: “It represents what a lot of families lived through and shows who we became and are now.” Durham mining museum is exactly the place to find out about all of this. And it’s a place where the culture of mining communities is lived and kept. “Look after your mates and they look after you,” is a saying Michael, and all miners, attach great importance to, both under and above ground. Even though he’s retired and hasn’t worked in a mine for decades, he still calls himself a pitman. He, Tony and the other volunteers are first and foremost pitmen – and will always be. The pride is present in every artefact of the museum and in every story of the volunteers. It’s important for them to capture their way of life and keep up the social values that came with it.
Durham Mining Museum is a place people will always get more than they would have imagined – more information, more values, more stories. When Tony talks about why he is a volunteer, he comes back to the big black visitors book at the entrance of the museum: “You’ll not find a negative comment in the book. Everybody appreciates us. And we’ll always try to find a funny story for them.”
The museum has free admission but as a charity, a donation is welcomed. It’s open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 2pm and you can find more information at www.dmm.org.uk/
Anton Weineck
Spennymoor's local community newspaper.
