JackEdgell was born c1903 at Beamish and I was given a copy of his notes of starting work at Beamish Sawmills. The notes were compiled in 1984. I do not know when Jack died. However, these notes give a good early history of the sawmills and the collieries of Beamish to which they were connected. This was a fairly long document and I will add to it as and when I have time.
MY MEMORIES OF THE OLD SAWMILLS, STOREHOUSE AND STACKYARD BY JACK EDGELL,JANUARY 1984
The old sawmills and storehouse are no longer there. The space where they stood for so long has now been swallowed up by the new road which is now being built. The storehouse and sawmills stood on the left hand side of the old road just before West Pelton Church, and the new road runs through part of the sawmill yard and alongside the colliery railway line which went from Beamish to beyond Pelton.
The pony field where the pit ponies used to graze is now a childrens playground.
There were two streets of colliery houses named Eden Tce. North and Eden Tce. South which stood by the side of the pony field.
I started work at the sawmills when I was 16 which is almost 65 years ago.I was employed as a "Puller Off" to the sayer R Little who lived in the bottom house of Eden Tce North which was the sawyers house.The first sawyer that I knew of was T Hall and then G Bennett. My Uncle Jabez Edgell took over temporarily and he suggested to Mrs R J English that Mr R Little would be a suitable man to fill the position. He had been sawyer for a Mr Bucken. When he retired, he became sparetime gardner for foor Mr Chapman at the Woodlands, Beamish, where he worked until he was over 80.
In the timber yard, there was a siding where the trucks of timber which came in were unloaded. There were also trucks of beans, corn, carrots and turnips which were used to feed the pit ponies. There were also creosote tanks in the centre of the yard.
the wife and daughter of the sawyer's brother were employed to cut up the trees and bring them into the sawmill on a timber tram which ran on iron rails. The sawyer and I cut them up into balks, crown trees and other lengths suitable for pit props which were used at the Beamish 2nd Pit, sometimes known as Chophill, and also for the Air Pit Those used at the 2nd P i were creosoted in the tank before use because it was a "wet pit".
Most of the timber was cut at the sawmills at that time and I have seen as many as three carts waiting to be loaded up before going to the pits. We also cut oak railway keys and oak drags which were fixed too the wheels for brake.
On Saturdays and Sundays we went to Congburn Woods at Edmonsley by horse drawn lorry where we cut down trees which were taken to the sawmill. There was a stream in the wood and we made bridges over it with logs and branches and thus made bogie ways over which we could convey the wood we had cut. At that time, the wages were higher as the result of the Sankey Award. My wage was £5 per week, and this included £1 for working on a Sunday. AS a matter of interest, the wages were reduced considerably later on. In 1933, when i was married, my wage was £2.2s per week.
Next to the sawmill was the Choppy Hous where hay was chopped up by machine to feed the horses. The man in charge of this was maed J Embleton, and he had three women working with him, Mrs Dennison, L Heatherington and L Houghton. These women brought the bales of hay forward and J Embleton fed the hay into the Choppy Machine. Only a limite ammount was put in at a time otherwise the machine could be choked if over loaded.
The chopped hay was then put into huge bags which were then loaded on to colliery long carts and taken to several pits to feed the pit ponies.
There was a boiler house behind the Choppy House which was fired by coal and J F Leonad was the man who attended to it.This boiler drove the machinery in the sawmill, choppy house and corn lofts.
The strehouse was also connected to the sawmill, and two houses stood nearby. One was occupied by the storekeeper G Tait, and the other by the horsekeeper J Iceton. There were several thosand pounds worth of stock kept in this building . This included several different kinds of oil, picks, shovels, shafts, ten tons of nails, files and brattice cloth which was used down the pit to regulate the air, in fact everything that was needed for a colliery, and also materials required for the repair of the property.
If anything was needed after dark in the storehouse, one had to wait until daylight as lamps or naked lights could not be used because of the fire risk.
In later years all the buildings were lit up with electricity and this was a great improvement.
Above the storehouse were two stories of corn lofts, and to reach these one had to go up one flight of stairs on the outside of the building, and one flight on the inside.
There were hundreds of tons of corn kept in the corn loft and it was a nesting place for rats> Sometimes one of the men would shovel up young rats and throw them into the furnace.
Every week, labourers from Twizel, Handenhold, Alma, ChophillMary Pit and Jackies Pit came to put up supplies of corn into bags for their pits.
The bags in which the corn was delivered had to be emptied and returned to the owners so the labourers brought bags with them and they were filled by one man holding the bag and another man filling them.
The skirting boards around the walls of the corn loft were 2 feet 6 inches wide and 1 and a quaarter inches thick to keep the corn off the walls.
There were training stables in the pony field where Jack Iceton, the head horsekeeper, his son joe and Frank Elgie broke in the ponies before they were taken down the pit. They were trained to pull the pit tubs around the pony field.
At times, ponies were killed in the pit and others injured and there was a sick bay at the training stables where Mr Ryder, the colliery vetinery surgeon attended to the animals.He decided whether or not the ponies should be destroyed, and those which could not be cured were" put to sleep". They were collected by Dobson who was a horse slaughterer and he took them to Newcastle to the Knackery in Percy Street
All this took place when I first started work.
The stackyard was on the opposite side of the road of the sawmill, facing the storehouse. It was used to stack hay for the horses and pit ponies.
Every summer, Mr Iceton visited the local farmes and he told them the price that the Colliery Company was prepared to pay per ton of hay, and the farmers told him how many tons they would be able to sell the Colliery. As a result of this, Mr Iceton would have an idea how many, and what size of stacks would be put up