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Some Special Interests => Occupation Interests => Topic started by: Cheskauk2013 on Thursday 20 February 14 17:51 GMT (UK)

Title: *COMPLETED* Pit Sinker? Coal Mining.
Post by: Cheskauk2013 on Thursday 20 February 14 17:51 GMT (UK)

Hello,

I am interested in finding out more about this occupation.

It was taken from an 1891 Scotland Census,Govan,Lanarkshire.

Any help much appreciated,

Fran  :)

Title: Re: Pit Sinker? Coal Mining.
Post by: JenB on Thursday 20 February 14 17:59 GMT (UK)

A sinker was  highly skilled man who 'sank' (i.e. dug) the shafts for coal mines.
Skilled sinkers were in great demand and moved from colliery to colliery to dig shafts.
One of my ancestors was a sinker and moved around all over the north of England and Scotland.

If you do a google search on this you'll get a lot of useful information  ;)

Title: Re: Pit Sinker? Coal Mining.
Post by: Cheskauk2013 on Thursday 20 February 14 18:09 GMT (UK)

Thank you JenB. I will take a look.

 :)

Title: Re: Pit Sinker? Coal Mining.
Post by: Cheskauk2013 on Thursday 20 February 14 18:11 GMT (UK)

Wow,JenB It sounds interesting. I didn't know where to start. This is great.

Fran  :)

Title: Re: Pit Sinker? Coal Mining.
Post by: sallyyorks on Thursday 20 February 14 23:33 GMT (UK)

Scotland coal mining history site
http://www.scottishmining.co.uk/

Also an English site which has a lot of info on the mines.
http://www.cmhrc.co.uk/site/home/index.html


As Jen said Sinkers moved around. A lot of colliers and their families did too.

Title: Re: Pit Sinker? Coal Mining.
Post by: Cheskauk2013 on Friday 21 February 14 19:15 GMT (UK)

This is great. Thank you very much for the websites. I am off to have a look.

Francesca  :)

Title: Re: *COMPLETED* Pit Sinker? Coal Mining.
Post by: peter13 on Sunday 23 February 14 16:14 GMT (UK)

I have pit sinkers among my ancestors and there are some other things you might want to look at.

They may have been involved in associated industries. My pit sinking ancestors started off as lead miners, worked as colliery managers as well as pit sinkers, ran brickworks (they needed a lot of bricks for the shafts) and also sunk shafts for railway tunnels.
They sometimes formed new partnerships for new contracts. I found records of the dissolution of one of the partnerships in the London Gazette that you can search online. Sinking one pit could go on for a couple of years or more, especially if it was a deep pit and they had problems. I've managed to find one or two newspaper reports.
Also it might be worth checking engineers' associations. I found one of my ancestors in the records of The Chesterfield and Derbyshire Institute of Mining Civil and Mechanical Engineers (records at Chesterfield Library). No doubt other parts of the country had similar associations.

Regards,
Peter