Mr. Ray picked us up this morning and we headed back to Beamish today.  Tickets to Beamish are valid for one year so we plan to go as much as we can while we are still here in lovely County Durham.  It seems, quite without knowing, that today was a very special day to head to Beamish.  There is an antique car exhibition at Beamish all weekend and it began today.  What a pleasant surprise!  Upon arrival to the site we were greeted by the most fantastic cars and their drivers.  I will show you all the cars and lorries in tomorrow’s post.  Today I want to show you  the decades that we have visited today.  Many of the locations inside Beamish reopened in April for the Spring and Summer.  There were loads of places we hadn’t seen yet.  We probably packed a bit too much in to one day but it was so much fun.

Our first stop in today’s time travel was early 1900.  We traveled next door to the Pit Village to Beamish’s Colliery (Coal Mine).

Meg was a bit unsure of a venture down into the mine so Mr. Ray and Meg kept watch above ground while Joshua and I donned hard hats and stopped in at the lantern shed.  Our guide filled us in on the hard and dangerous work of a coal miner.   He showed us the tags system on a board which allowed for a quick head count in case of a shaft collapse.   It really brought so much history to life for us and made the sacrifices that coal miners have given all that much more real.

We traveled on through the coal sift area where the coal would be brought through a series of hand sorting and screening to remove non coal rocks and debris.  Each coal cart would have a miner’s number on metal tag.  This miner or group of miners would receive credit for the coal carts they filled.

Any rocks in the cart would be deducted from the pay.  Miners were very careful to place only clean coal in the cart.  Pit ponies and men would bring each cart to the surface.   We learned so much today.

Tomorrow I will tell you even more of our adventures at Beamish.

Cheers,

Beth