Etching from 1817 of the stone cross at it’s original location on East Hill (now the cemetery) in Thrybergh.
I wrote in a previous blog about the stone cross that can be found at St Leonard Church in Thrybergh and while researching that post I came across the legend of St Leonard of Reresby and the various stories and myths associated with it. It was a story I was unfamiliar with even though I’m more than familiar with Thrybergh and the church itself. Thanks go to John Doxey, among others, for providing some of the background information to my own search on his own website. jon rosling
Tucked away from the main road down a narrow lane is St Leonard’s Church in Thrybergh, South Yorkshire. When I visited it was mid-February 2017 and the air added a dampness that seemed reflected in the dark stone and gloom of the church, though it was off-set somewhat by the pretty little flowers that were growing in and around the cemetery, snowdrops for the most part. jon rosling
Back in 2010, and as part of the Rotherham Steelos Songs of Steel project I had the great pleasure of working camera on an interview with Ted Thompson, a former Rotherham steelworker, who was then in his 1990s and living alone in Rotherham. jon rosling
It was one of the most fascinating interviews I’ve ever watched and I could’ve sat and listened to Ted recall his childhood and working life long into the night.
He recalled his school days with such incredible clarity, describing places in Rotherham that I could recognise (though only just recognise for the town – and the world – has moved on) and remember even his first day as a Rotherham steelworker in the early 1930s, still a boy and barely out of short trousers.
I found out last week that Ted passed away recently and I was touched by a genuine sadness, both at this elderly gentleman’s end and at the loss of memory and history that he takes with him.
The town where I lived, that has such a rich, varied and interesting past, and how that place used to be dies a little more as the generations blink out and fade into memory themselves.
RIP Mr Thompson. It was a pleasure to have met and talked with you. jon rosling
Clearing through some old videos recently I uncovered a corporate video made for Silverwood Colliery in the late 1980s.
Silverwood Colliery was a coal mine that began life at the start of the 20th Century and the community around it is where I lived, played as a child and grew into adulthood.
My grandfather was a deputy there, and a lot of my family on my mother’s side worked there too until the pit was closed as part of the Conservative government’s pit closure programme of the 1990s.
The land where Silverwood Colliery itself stood and the coal slag pile and slurry lake next to it have since been converted into a nature reserve and a large, modern housing estate sits on what was once farmland next to the colliery.
It’s interesting to see this footage and, once you get past the corporate, promotional voice-over, it’s equally interesting to consider what the place looks like now.
My family and personal history is wedded to the area – I remember watching the miners picketing outside the pit in the 1984 coal strike, and I spent a lot of time playing as a child in and around the woodlands where Silverwood Colliery was located.
The grassed coal piles were a favourite walking place too – the blackened hills of coal slag held a kind of strange mystery for me. They resembled the mountains of Mordor but the variety of wildlife there gave the landscape a strange kind of beauty. I have some photos of that land somewhere that I might dig out.
Meanwhile enjoy the video, cheesy as it is!
Update 28/5/2024 – Neil Bingham’s excellent Silverwood Colliery Heritage Group on Facebook has a much more detailed history about the pit and the people and community that form it’s history.
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