Stabling of Pit Ponies

Resting conditions, like working conditions, differed enormously from colliery to colliery. The stable seem to have been laid out in a very similar fashion, with the stalls down one side of a wide corridor, much the same as stables above ground. Sometimes the walls and roof were bare rock, sometimes even coal but often the walls would be of brick. Dividing partitions were usually of wood, though some were again of brick. Each stall would have a food box and water container. The roadway behind the stalls may be fitted with rails to ease the supply of food and to carry away the soiled bedding. The bedding was rarely straw because of the risk of fire. In some cases peat was used but the most common material was sawdust that was comfortable for the pony, convenient for the Ostler and cheap for the management.

Stables had to be built fairly early I the mine’s development and so were placed close to the main shaft. As the working spread further and further, the journey for man and animal increased until ponies could be spending a very large portion of each shift travelling to and from their place of work. As a result, secondary stables were often built ‘inbye’ nearer to the working districts.

The average costs incurred for each horse per week were:-

	S	D
Keep	10	2.891
Repair to harness	0	2.538
2 men on surface preparing feed	0	5.296
Ostlers	10	9.153
Brush and Curry Combs	0	0.228
Vet and Medicine	0	3.058
Shoeing	0	6.000
Total	13	5.164

Is was the case that no matter how well a horse is bred, fed and stabled, if its feet are not well looked after, it cannot perform to its full potential. A horse’s hooves grow in length and need to be trimmed back regularly but also they are soft enough to wear away if the animal walks frequently on hard surfaces. As a result working horses are shod with iron shoes. These are best fitted hot so that the heat of the metal burns an accurately fitting bed for the shoe on the hoof. It is best that this should be done by a farrier, a man who has the skill of a blacksmith with the added knowledge of horse anatomy.

All pit ponies were shod. Obviously open fires were extremely dangerous and as such were forbidden. As a result, pit ponies had to be shod cold. This meant that the hoof had to be filed to fit a pre-shaped shoe, those shoes being made in the blacksmith’s shop in the colliery yard.

After the nationalization in 1947, the N.C.B. included horseshoeing in their training for colliery blacksmiths.