I had hoped to take this picture earlier in the week, but things didn’t work out that way. Instead I’ll do it today.

This is a memorial to the miners killed in the Redding Pit Disaster of 25-Sep-1923.

From all I have read the pit was well run, but accidents happen. On that morning water burst through a dyke separating the Redding pit from older, abandoned mineworkings, trapping sicty-six miners underground.

Twenty-one miners were brought out that day, and a further five came out nine days later. The remaining forty men died.

This memorial was originally a vertical stone slab. On 2002 the Free Colliers reset the paque in the black granite stone you can see in the picture. For the centenary of the disaster, the Free Colliers enhanced the memorial to the beautiful structure in the photograph, memorialising these forty men who died deep underground.