As you may know my ancestors, the Mitchards were all Radstock miners on my father's side and I also live in a pit cottage in Radstock where they used to thrive. I constantly tread the pit paths of my forefathers and walk the same streets, drink in the same pub (the Tyning) as they did - therefore I am always trying to connect or reimagine what life was like in a pit village all those years ago. My father is of course full of stories of a 'special place' where people looked after each other on the surface like they did underground and I am always all ears for any stories of miners. Yesterday he talked about the white silk scarf mufflers they all wore when out on the razzle in Bath on saturday nights - any trouble and all the miners would pitch in - easily identified by the uniform of the muffler. Of course everywhere was black then with smoke from all the chimneys, steam engines and coal dust - nowadays trees cover the old slag heaps (batches) and wildlife flourishes in the ruins of the tumbled down mine buildings. This picture from the Museum collection shows Lower Writhlington colliery part of which is now famous for its fossils dragged up from deep below many years ago and a haven for dog walkers and ramblers as part of the Colliers way cyclepath . I saw a stoat this morning darting out of an old Somerset and Dorset railway hut, which pretty much says it all as the area once black with smut is now populated by Roe deer, badgers, and the like. Of course mining's the stuff of museums these days and Radstock has been blessed with one the finest but any kind of film of mining is interesting to me even when its been given the Hollywood treatment. This opening scene of the John Ford How Green Was My Valley starring Roddy McDowall is worth a watch - it has Spanish subtitles. Radstock was pretty much like a Welsh mining village but without the singing - and mining started a lot earlier - the 1760s but otherwise I think this is quite a good picture of Victorian mining and worth a look.So to conclude with an answer to the question How Green Was My Valley? - Not Very but it is now...in fact you can hardly notice there was any mining going on at all - and that's probably the rub.
