PRUDHOE TOWN COUNCIL19 April 2012
THE PRUDHOE MINERS’ RACE– 2012
1. Information sought
The information required to support the publicity for the race includes the following:
The Heritage of the Miners Race –including links with the local mining industry, and the related history of mining in the area
When was the race started – how and why
When did the race stop taking place – how and why
What was the original route
Any well known participants
Any stories connected with the race
Photographs
2. Source material
A précis of information supplied in the publication by the Prudhoe & District Local History Society publication A Prudhoe Likeness, (locally published, copyright JC Standish 1999) is the source of most of the information in this section.
The race appears to have started in (or around) 1920, when it was recorded that local runner Jack Appleby was the victor. A Prudhoe Likeness records that trophies were donated by the Duke of Northumberland. At around this time it was recorded that ‘marathons’, described as ‘long distance running events’ were popular and were organised by local running clubs. It is clear from the route (see below) and from the description in the history that in the local vernacular the word ‘marathon’ did not connote a race at, or even near, the official distance of the Olympic marathon.
The original race started on Front Street at the West Wylam Inn (locally known as ‘The Jerry’), and proceeded eastward past where Waterworld now stands, turning right up Prudhoe Hall Drive (now Prudhoe Hospital Drive), then right again on to Moor Road. The race then ran along Moor Road past where Prudhoe Community High School now stands) before turning left onto Highfield Lane and following the Lane to High Mickley, down Eastgate Bank to Mickley Square, then back into Prudhoe along the main road (now A695) and along West Road and Front Street to the finish at The Jerry.
It would at be difficult if not impossible to run the race following the original route today a) because the original race involved a succession of right turns across oncoming traffic and b) because there is no through access to the former Hospital site.
Mining is recorded in this part of East Tynedale as early as 1434, but the history of mining in the industrial age in this area dates from 1836. In this year the first shafts were sunk at West Wylam, which became a principal centre of the local mining industry thereafter, along with Mickley, Eltringham, Low Prudhoe, Durham Riding and Hedley Park. From a population recorded as being less than 100 in the early 1800s, the agricultural community of Prudhoe had developed into a predominantly industrial centre by mid-century, with a population of between four and five thousand by 1890. The West Wylam pit alone employed between 900 and 1000 people, with a total of seven ‘drift’ seams being worked. Many of the incoming workers were of Irish stock who had come to England following the Famine of the mid-1840s, and they were ready parishioners for the Roman Catholic church that was later constructed by Susannah Liddell, widow of the principal local mine owner, Matthew Liddell of Prudhoe Hall, at the Hall. Following the nationalisation of the mining industry in 1948, mining continued until 1961, by which time it had been concluded that continued extraction of coal from the drift shafts in the area was no longer economic. Many of those who had been employed in the local mining industry moved away to work in areas such as West Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire where mining still flourished, while others retired or took alternative employment.
The early years of the Miners’ Race featured competitors recorded in A Prudhoe Likeness. One, Archer ‘Archie’ Pattison won the race three years in a row in the mid-1920s, thereby becoming entitled to keep the winner’s trophy. However he was not well regarded in some quarters as, in order to be registered to run in the race, he became a member of the Conservative and Unionist Club (‘the Tory Club’) on West Road, in a predominantly working class society (and above all an industry) where to be a Labour Party supporter was regarded as an article of faith. Apart from Jack Appleby, mentioned above, and Archie Pattison, other noted runners were recorded as Jimpson Harle (five feet tall and less than 6 stone in weight)and Dickie Moore. A Prudhoe Likeness records that these gentlemen were trained by William Grigg and ran for the ‘Big Club’, Prudhoe Working Men’s Club, founded 1903 and then, as now, located on South Road. It is not open to doubt that that the ‘Big Club’ and the ‘Tory Club’ were engaged in fierce rivalry in sport as well as in politics.
Apart from the references to trophies, above, the local history mentions the fact that food parcels were given as race prizes during the 1926 General Strike which (as the name suggests) paralysed much of the national economy. It has been separately suggested that the Co-operative might have been the supplier / donor of food hampers as race prizes over a longer period.
In the early years of the Second World War a veterans’ race was added to the calendar, over a five-mile course. A Prudhoe Likeness records that one winner of this race, ‘Iron Jaws’ Watson, was so-called because it was claimed that he could lift a 16-stone weight with his teeth!
The history does not record when the race took place each year and there is no indication of how, or by whom, the races were organised, records kept, etc. It is thought that the races came to an end after the end of the Second World War and in any event prior to the closure of the last pit shafts.The fate of the trophies and race records is unknown.
A race was organised as part of the Millennium celebrations in 2000, and it is understood that assistance was received from Tynedale Harriers in putting on this event.
Two photographs reproduced in A Prudhoe Likenessgive a flavour of the race. One shot shows Jack Appleby and Archie Pattison in running kit, crouching either side of a table displaying their trophies, while to the rear stand their respective trainers wearing waistcoats with watch chains, and carrying sweat towels. The other photograph shows a runner approaching Prudhoe West First School from the west, accompanied by a posse of men on bicycles, with spectators looking on.
Whilst A Prudhoe Likeness does not explicitly state that the competitors named above and others like them were all employed in the mining industry, the fact is that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the vast majority of working people in the area were employed in the industry, or in fields of work ancillary to it. With the tight confines of many of the drift seams (the ‘Victoria’ seam at West Wylam was a mere 1 foot 3 inches high!), it would have been a distinct advantage for a mineworker to have been of a build and weight similar to Jimpson Harle, mentioned above.
3. Town Council involvement
The Town Council has led the way in promoting the running of a Miners’ Race as part of the celebration of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is hoped that a successful event in 2012 could lead to the race being organised every year or two.
Richard Whinney, Executive Officer / Clerk to the Council, Prudhoe Town Council