Gresford disaster: The lasting tribute
Post categories: History & Memories,ÌýWrexham
| 08:35 UK time, Tuesday, 27 July 2010
The pits may have long since closed but the importance of the song or The Miners' Hymn as it has become known, continues to resonate.
A new book, has brought emotions back to the surface, explaining how the famous brass band composition - written to mark the mining tragedy which claimed the lives of 266 men in Wrexham in 1934 - "has become a requiem for mining communities and their way of life".
It's importance was highlighted again when reported on Friday how:
The film The Miners' Hymns at this year's Durham Festival is causing a stir in the mining community. Controversially, the film leaves out perhaps the most important miners' hymn - Gresford. Reporter Nicola Stanbridge remembers the miners who lost their lives in the Gresford mining disaster 76 years ago and the hymn written to commemorate.
Richard Moss, the 91Èȱ¬'s Political Editor for the North East and Cumbria, has been blogging about it too:
...music that was written as a memorial to one disaster has become so much more. It has been adopted as the "miner's hymn" and played at pit closures and pitmen's funerals throughout the region.
Today, there is just one survivor alive.
Albert Rowlands was a 14-year-old boy working in the colliery's lamp room when the night shift, including his father, went underground that fateful evening.
By the next day, September 22, 266 of them had died in one of the worst mining tragedies of the 20th century.
The tragedy inspired Durham miner Robert Saint to pen his hymn, and Albert, now nearly 90, was among those commemorating the event as part of .
Albert from Borras, Wrexham, remembers that night vividly: "Us boys in the lamp room had to be there as soon as the men started arriving for work.
"We were cycling to work with my dad and he told us to get on or we'd be late so we went on ahead.
"He picked up his lamp at the other window so I never saw him again. Two others of his friends were with us and they were lost as well. They're all still down there."
Albert's father John Rowlands operated a coal-cutting machine at the face and many men that Friday were 'doubling up' to get time off to watch the the following afternoon.
Albert said: "People have said there was a huge explosion and the ground shook but that's not true.
"All that happened was that telephone rang and the fireman said, 'They're all coming up,' and the miners were appearing and they seemed to be panicked.
"We were getting the lamps in and handing out the tallies and then it all went quiet
Only six miners climbed out through the choking smoke and dust.
"I was always hoping to see my dad," said Albert. "You could always tell him even when they all looked alike, covered in coaldust, because he always had a big grin and lovely white teeth.
"But he never came back and his tally was left there hanging on its hook."
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