A commemorative service to mark North Staffordshire’s worst pit disaster is being held on Sunday. The service takes place at Halmer End Methodist Church in memory of the miners who were killed in the Minnie Pit in Halmer End village on January 12, 1918.
It was early on a snowy Saturday morning that around 250 miners had descended on the pit. In the village the womenfolk were preparing for an old folks’ party in the Primitive Methodist Chapel that evening.
But within a few hours, the festive decorations were taken down and the chapel became a makeshift mortuary. There, the women laid out the first mangled bodies from the pit, following a disaster which claimed the lives of 156 men and boys, including one of the rescuers.
The Minnie Pit was part of the Podmore Colliery, which included a sister shaft, the Podmore, and an old drift mine known as the Bullhurst Rearer, or Bursted Onion. Minnie was the name of a former owner’s daughter. The colliery worked the rich Banbury and Bullhurst seams.
Tomorrow’s service takes place at 3pm and will be attended by the mayor and mayoress of Newcastle-under-Lyme. Funds raised at the service will go towards the church and the Minnie Pit Heritage Site.
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