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Old 09-10-2015, 12:00 PM
janwhin janwhin is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Nr Eglingham
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Derilda View Post
Just as an aside, I often heard a story that a butchers cart drifted off the track to Coldrife Farm during snow and was swallowed up when it fell into old workings. I was hoping that the story would be confirmed by opencast work but have just learned that those fields were left untouched. If true they will still be down there, but also, could just be another story to go unproven.
Another aside, I 've come across the newspaper report for the incident with the butcher's cart:
Hatlepool Mail, 24 January 1931:
"A horse was plunged 30 feet into pit workings when a portion of the roadway suddenly caved in at High Coldrife, near Broomhill Colliery, yesterday afternoon.
Parties of miners worked for hours with pulleys in an effort to haul the animal to the surface, but at a late hour last night it was still trapped underground.
The horse was being led by Adam Goodfellow, in the employ of Mr James Rowell, butcher, of Amble, on his rounds when suddenly it seemed to shy and its hindquarters began to disappear into the ground.
Goodfellow saw that a hole about 3ft in diameter had appeared in the roadway.
He immediately unharnessed the horse so as to pull it out, but as soon as it was unharnessed the horse fell further down and disappeared out of sight.
The cart was pulled back or it would have followed, as the hole became larger.
The hole was 30 feet deep, and a remarkable feature is that two men working down the pit got past the horse and climbed towards the surface.
One was able to get out at the top, but the other was not so successful, and he had to be pulled to the surface by ropes."
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