The Valley (70 page)

I am especially grateful to Hazel Batley of Barnsley for explaining how nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century spiritualists sought to democratise not only religious faith and epistemology, but also medicine and healing. The more I learned about this as I worked on the book, the more I saw similarities between Lynda’s independent thinking about her condition and the spiritualist healers of Walter and Annie’s generation, although I fear I have yet to convince Lynda herself of this.

Ex-miner and author David John Douglass was helpful and inspiring, and taught me how to see my grandmother’s stories in the context of the miners’ sense of history. Coal mining was hard and dangerous work, and pit villages could be harsh places in which to live, but it seems to me that the decent people of Harry and Winnie’s generation, and several generations preceding it, had a quiet belief that they were working together to improve themselves, their working conditions and their environments. This lent a sense of purpose, or at least of being headed somewhere; you had made the present more comfortable than the past, and the future would be more comfortable again. From the late twentieth century onwards that sense has ebbed away somewhat, and with it a component of an old sense of identity. One of several ideas that have moved into its old space is nostalgia; a question asked by people trying to revive ex-mining communities is: is it possible to draw lessons and values from the past that can be adapted to the future, and thus used to restore some of that lost identity? David John Douglass considers these questions in his autobiographical trilogy
Coaldust and Stardust
, which is the best account of a modern coal miner’s life that I know, and was a source for some of the history in this book. I would also like to thank the writers Barry Hines and Paul Routledge for helping and encouraging me when I talked to them about my family and the Dearne Valley.

Dozens of other people talked to me about family stories or the Dearne Valley in general, including: Albert Blessed; the members of the Bolton-upon-Dearne local history group; Don Booker, former editor of the
Barnsley Chronicl
e
; Tim Brant of the Merchant Navy Association; Richard Breese, Strategic Director of the South Yorkshire Coalfield Partnership; Marylise Campbell of the Sprotborough Library book group; Ann Carr, church warden at Goldthorpe Parish Church; Betty Cook; Donald Edes; Brian Elliott, historian; Tony Farsides; Dave Feickert, historian; Anne Gray; Richard Gray; Dieter Hopkin, then at the National Mining Museum; Peter Hyman; Margaret Lister, 1972 Yorkshire Coal Queen; Jennifer Kabat; Janet King; Susan Linstead at the Dearne Advanced Learning Centre; Ann Littlewood, author of
Storthes Hall Remembered
; David Lunn, former Bishop of Sheffield; Father Rodney Marshall, former vicar of Goldthorpe; Julie Medlam, Theatre Manager at the Dearne Playhouse; Rick Naylor of the Police Superintendents’ Association; Father Peter Needham, the vicar of Grimethorpe; Paul Cornerford and Peter Farnham of WSP Development & Transportation; Anne Scargill; Dirk Sheldon; Inky Thompson, former NUM official and Barnsley councillor; Fred Walker; Barry Westerman, former steward of Highgate Working Men’s Club; Geoff Widdop; and Bruce Wilson.

People who helped in other ways include Stephen Armstrong, Kevin and Alan Braddock, the Rev. Marjorie Brown, Richard Budge, the Churchill Centre, Gareth Coombs, Robin Denselow, Allie Dickinson, Andrew Duerden, John Edmondson, Ekow Eshun, Charles Gant, Andrew Harrison, Mark Hodkinson, Anwen Hooson, Graeme Johnson, Ted Kelly, Cllr Graham Kyte, Peter Lyle, Sean Moore, the National Union of Mineworkers, Stuart Oliver of UK Coal, Julian Rudd, Laura St Quinton, Cllr Ken Sanderson, Rob Sellars, Laura Smith, the Sprotbrough Library book group, Tony Swaby and Kevin and Nicola Welsh. Staff at the following library departments also helped with research: Doncaster Central Library Archives and Local Studies Department, Barnsley Central Library Archives and Local Studies Department, Chesterfield Local Studies Library, Sheffield Archives and Local Studies Library, Shirebrook Library, and the Working Class Movement Library, Salford.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife Laura for her patience, her reading of draft chapters, and for supporting me when other women would have quite rightly chucked me down the nearest coal mine.

A Note on the Author

Richard Benson is the author of the number one bestseller
The Farm
, which was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award in 2005, and was a 2006 Richard and Judy Book Club choice. He lives in London.

By the Same Author

The Farm

First published in Great Britain 2014

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © 2014 by Richard Benson

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Photographs are from the author’s personal collection

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