Pit Ponies and Underground Work

The coal-getting part of the mining industry basically consists of three operations: detaching the coal from the underground seam; transporting it via horizontal tunnels to the pit shaft and raising it to the surface. Originally, all three were done by hand and today, in what mining industry is left in the United Kingdom, it is done mechanically. During the transition, horses did the transportation of the coal from the seam to the pit shaft.

The main task for the horses was ‘hauling’. This meant taking the empty Pont hauling a dram underground from A Tribute to the Rhondda drams from the main haulage system to the collier at the coalface and bring the full ones to the haulage system to be taken to the pit bottom.

However, it was not that simple. Conditions at the coalface and along the narrow passages or ‘roads’ leading to the face varied considerably. The collier obtained his section of the face, called a ‘stall’ or ‘heading’ in a quarterly draw. Similarly, the haulier drew a ‘flat’ and two ponies for 3 months at a time. A ‘flat’ was a collection point for drams for 2 or 3 stalls and distances from the stalls to the flat varied considerably. Sometimes the distance for each journey could affect the haulier’s pay.

He may, for example, be given a basic wage per score of drams at 80 yards [the average journey for that pit] but be paid an increment as the distance increased to 100 and 120 yards. As the collier would be paid according the number of drams filled, woe betide any haulier who did not remove full drams and replace them with empty ones.

Both collier and haulier placed a ‘tally’ on each dram so that their work could be accounted for. Some roadways were so narrow that the ponies themselves experienced difficulty in turning around to face the other way and a special technique was employed:-

A pony would tuck his head between his front legs turn slowly till his neck touched the sides then bring his back legs in and spin like a top.

There was the possibility that at the face the boy might get, briefly, the assistance of the men working there, but in the roadway he was on his own. The roadways were simply tunnels equipped with rails and their sole function was to facilitate getting the coal away from the face.

Roadway dimensions were never generous. If a pony and dram could scrape through without obvious injury, that would do. But roadways never remained the same. Convergence was a natural phenomenon, roadways got lower and narrower by the hour and inevitably one would dint the floor or chip the roof and/or both, to retain the original passage.

Men were employed to keep the roadways clear of fallen rock and wide and high enough to let the drams pass through, but often the changing conditions were found the hard way.

Ventilation doors are part of the important system which regulates and controls the passage of fresh air around a mine. These doors open one way and the ponies were taught to open them by pushing the door with their head.

A difficulty common to every mine is the darkness. This darkness is the pitch-black of the underground that is very different from the darkness above ground. Underground, the darkness is complete and it is impossible for the eyes to ‘become accustomed to it.’ Many miners believed that the ponies were able to see in this total darkness.

………So if your lamp would be put out you might have to wait for it to be lit again. There would only be one lighting station in the district and one man with the key to it. It meant that you might have to go an hour or more without your lamp. You could not afford to wait, as you were on piecework, so you just carried on in the dark. You had to find where your tokens were and the pony would take you to the empty dram and then on to the coalface where the men had their lamps.
You could let Rosie go four miles to the coalface, by herself, along the travelling way where there was no danger from machinery. She would be there when you arrived, not a foot wrong in the dark. We could not go 10 yards without a lamp. …..