The Winding Gear

It wasn't a working day but as I was in the area and it was the only day the owner was available, I carried out another Homes for Ukraine inspection before joining L at the stables.

L dropped me off at the top of the hill near the house, and after the inspection I walked the 3 miles to meet up with her.  Huntington is a much changed village.  I can remember one of my first work related jobs was to write a report on the possibility of creating a smoke control area in the village.  At the time it still had a working mine (Littleton Colliery) which dominated the area.  Many of the people living in the village worked (or had worked) at the colliery and still got discounted solid fuel because of their employment.  It was an uphill struggle.

That all changed in 1984, when the colliery closed.  We had recently started a new inspection regime for the colliery and I was due to travel down into the mine on a familiarisation trip, but that was all stopped.  It would have been fascinating (although I was a little apprehensive) to head down the shaft and tunnels; at the time the nearest coal face was some 7 miles from the pit head and it took the coal miners two hours to reach the face from the surface.

This wheel is one of the few reminders of where the colliery once stood.  There is now a modern estate and a junior school on the area of the colliery buildings and landsale.  Huntington has seen major redevelopment since that time, but for those of us that know the area there are still plenty of indications of its past history.  

I recently created some old and new images fro the Council and the extra shows how the colliery used to dominate the scenes in the village.