Sign up to our newsletter for the latest Northumberland news Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

One hundred years ago today the Woodhorn Colliery disaster claimed 13 lives. Mike Kelly speaks to the descendants of two men who lost their lives in the tragedy.

When Tamar Armstrong, daughter of pit deputy David Armstrong and girlfriend of miner Tom Clementson, felt the earth rumble beneath her feet as a gas explosion ripped through Woodhorn Colliery, a terrible thought crossed her mind that haunted her for years afterwards.

As she ran towards the scene of the unfolding disaster alongside many other desperate families, her first hope was that her boyfriend had survived, without an initial thought for her dad.

“It’s the worst thing I ever did,” she later said.

Tamar made the admission to Joyce Southern, granddaughter of David Armstrong. To compound her guilt Tom, did survive, and later became her husband while her dad did die alongside 13 other men that grim day, August 13, 1916.

“They were the most important men in her life, she would have wanted them both to live, she was just so mixed up,” said Joyce.

“All sorts of strange thoughts would go through anybody’s mind on a day like that.”

It was a day that changed the pit community next to Ashington, Northumberland, forever.

By bitter irony, David shouldn’t have been working that shift alongside his brother Thomas who was also to die.

Joyce, 80, of Kendal Avenue, Cullercoats, said: “He’d told Thomas he’d work and had forgotten he had a cycle race. He tried to find someone else to replace him but when he couldn’t he just went to work so as not to let down his brother.”

Alongside David, 38, and Thomas, 43, the others who died were George Blair, 46, Daniel Harrison, Joseph Harrogate, 29, Robert Hindmarsh, 46, and Joseph Hodgson, 38.

There was also George R. Hudson, 38, Walter Hughes, 38, George Marshall, 43, John George Patterson, 21, Edward Walton, 48, and Ralph Howard, 44.

Ralph’s grandson is Bob Howard whose dad, also called Bob, was aged six at the time of the tragedy.

“Because he was so young he hardly had any recognition of my dad. The odd thing is what he did remember was that his seventh birthday was on August 14, the day after the explosion.

“He remembered being excited about it being his birthday and then disappointed because nobody wished him a happy birthday.”

As dad and grandson of course later well knew, everybody had something else on their minds.

The 13 men were driving a drift from the Low Main to the High Main when the explosion happened about 6.45am on the Sunday.

When the first rescuers reached the scene, they discovered a roof fall about nine yards along the drift. Men found there were either dead or dying.

Two men Harrison and Hughes, were found first, they were brought out alive but they were suffering from terrible burns and were crying out in pain. They later died in hospital.

Rescuers worked in relays trying to reach the last victim. At 3am on Monday they found the body of John George Patterson under a huge fall of stone, his body was charred and mutilated.

Patterson’s dead pony had been found nearby on the Sunday night between 10pm and 11pm.

Joyce said David left nine children and the eldest Esther - ‘Essie’ - went to see her dad’s body.

“She said he looked exactly as he did when he went to work. The blast had broken his neck and killed him but there was no other sign. It was the David Armstrong we used to see when he went to work, she said.”

Woodhorn is now an award winning museum and archive centre and in many ways looks as it did back in 1916.

Bob Howard, who like his dad worked down the pit there, said: “When you see the two shafts at the surface they look close together but when you are down the pit they are actually a big distance apart, it was quite a walk between the two.”

He found this out first hand when a technical issue with the pit head he usually left by was shut down so he had to make that walk, similar to that the rescue workers, which quickly became a recovery party, took back in 1916.

“It was up an down little hills. It was quite a walk.

“The man designated to take us to the other pit head stopped on the route and shone a light towards a brick wall and said - look at that.

“On the other side of the wall that was where the explosion was. It gave me a funny feeling. My grandfather had walked past this way and never got to the surface.”

Bob, like his dad, didn’t dwell on the disaster that took the lives of Ralph, who had five children, and his colleagues.

“It didn’t affect my father and so it didn’t affect me,” he said.

“When you’re underground you don’t think about accidents. It’s when you come to the surface you think about it.”

Nobody who worked down the pit did. Many had outdoor pursuits to take their minds of their hard lives. Ralph was a keen rugby player - there is a picture of him with a cup on show at Woodhorn - and then there was David Armstrong, no mean cyclist himself.

Meanwhile, days after the tragedy, grim realities other than the death of a loved one also kicked.

First, for the sons of those who lost fathers, their childhood was over and manhood began with an earlier than planned job down the mines.

David Armstrong’s son, also called David who was Joyce’s dad, was 13 then and earmarked for an electrician’s job. He was supposed to stay on at school.

“He had to go down the pit, to put food on the table,” said Joyce. “It was the reality for a lot of sons.”

Then there was the fact the houses the victims lived in were the property of the colliery owners and reserved for miners. Working miners.

Many of the grieving families found themselves homeless.

“It happened within a matter of weeks,” said Joyce. “They were turfed out onto the streets with their furniture.”

There was no compensation either, it was down to the hard up community to have a whip round to offer the bereaved some financial support.

Today the Ashington community will come together again to remember the disaster one hundred years ago.

The focus will be the memorial statue, a life-size sculpture of a mining deputy holding up a safety lamp. - eight of the victims were pit deputies.

It was originally sited in Hirst Park, Ashington.

“My dad campaigned to get it moved to Woodhorn,” said Bob, 82, of Cedar Terrace, Ashington.

Bob won’t be there today, he says he has other plans.

However will, along with a number of the descendants of the victims.

She said: “I think it changed so many people’s lives. “It’ll be an emotional day but it’s nice that it is being remembered.”