Mining & Art

British mining produced art in two directions at once: pitmen who painted the world they worked in, and artists who came to the coalfields to paint it from outside. Alongside both ran the lodge banners, the largest body of commissioned public art the industry ever owned. This category collects records with a specific, sourced mining connection — a named colliery, workforce, institution or site — not a general resemblance to industrial subject matter.

Records

Aberfan Memorial Garden	The memorial garden at Aberfan stands on the site of Pantglas Junior School, destroyed on 21 October 1966 when a waste tip from Merthyr Vale Colliery slid down onto it, killing 116 children and 28 adults. It was opened by the Queen in March 1973.
Aidan Doyle's paintings of Blenkinsopp Castle Colliery	Oil paintings by the North East artist Aidan Doyle from photographs he took underground at Blenkinsopp Castle Colliery in the early 1990s, among them Men Riding Up The Drift (2016) and Breaking Coal at the Face (2015), part of his series on mining and miners.
Bargoed (L. S. Lowry)	'Bargoed' (1965) is a painting by L. S. Lowry of the south Wales mining town and the colliery tip that towered over it, made after he toured the valleys with the collector Monty Bloom. It is one of the major works of his late return to industrial landscape and hangs in The Lowry in Salford; lent to Bargoed library, it drew local visitors who remembered it as broader and looser than his mill scenes.
Birch Coppice Miners Memorial	The Birch Coppice miners' memorial, at the entrance to Birch Coppice Business Park near Dordon, is a ten-foot monument crowned with a replica Davy lamp, lit at night, inside a brick wall engraved with the names of more than a thousand men from the Birch Coppice, Wood End and Birchmoor collieries. Two councillors who had worked the pits gathered the names; the site's developer paid for it.
Brierley Forest Park miners' sculptures	Carved figures of miners in Brierley Forest Park, on the site of Sutton Colliery at Huthwaite, made by Robert Koenig in memory of the five men who died after the colliery's explosion of 21 February 1957. Weathered originals in wood were replaced by a similar set with a new memorial stone.
Crawick Multiverse	When the open-cast coal working at Crawick near Sanquhar ran out and was left as a fifty-five-acre scar, the Duke of Buccleuch asked his friend the land artist Charles Jencks what could be done with it. The answer was a cosmological landscape of mounds, stone avenues and amphitheatres built out of what the mine had left behind — Jencks's largest completed work in Britain, and his last.
Crofton Mill Pit Remembered exhibition and the Friends of Crofton Mill Field	Crofton Mill Pit Remembered was a free exhibition at Headway Arts in Blyth in November 2023, the result of two years' work by the Friends of Crofton Mill Field. Built round the memories of the colliery's last surviving miners, it set out a timeline of the pit, which worked from 1885 to 1969, and a roll call of the men who worked there.
Dream	Jaume Plensa's Dream, a twenty-metre head of a girl with her eyes closed, cast in white dolomite concrete, stands on the spoil tip of Sutton Manor Colliery above the M62 — chosen and commissioned by a focus group of the pit's own former miners through Channel 4's Big Art Project, and unveiled in 2009 as a deliberate answer to the Angel of the North.
Felling Colliery disaster memorial, Heworth	The small obelisk in St Mary's churchyard, Heworth, Gateshead, over the common grave of 91 of the 92 men and boys killed in the Felling Colliery explosion of 25 May 1812, with plaques on its four faces naming them and giving their ages.
Fred Lawson's Redmire Quarry (1921)	A small watercolour of 1921 by the Wensleydale painter Fred Lawson showing quarrymen tipping a wagon at Redmire Quarry, with the remains of the old Cobscar lead-mining hush behind them. It has since passed through the Harrogate dealers McTague.
Gresford Disaster Memorial, Pandy	The memorial to the 266 men killed at Gresford Colliery in 1934, built round a wheel from the pit's winding gear and unveiled by the Prince of Wales in 1982 after a long campaign by Margaret Capper, who lost two of her family, and the miners' agent Ted McKay.
Guardian, Six Bells	Guardian is Sebastien Boyesen's 20-metre steel miner standing over the site of Six Bells Colliery, Abertillery, in memory of the 45 men killed there by an explosion on 28 June 1960. It was unveiled on the fiftieth anniversary, in 2010, and is dedicated to all mining communities.
Hamsterley Colliery war memorial	The Grade II listed war memorial of Hamsterley Colliery in the Derwent valley: a stone wheel-head cross after the St John's Cross of Iona, raised by the colliery's workmen to the 59 men of the pit killed in the First World War and in particular to Major Arthur Watson, of the family that ran the colliery, killed at Passchendaele.
Hartley Disaster Memorial, Earsdon	The Grade II listed obelisk in St Alban's churchyard, Earsdon, North Tyneside, raised about 1862 over the graves of the men and boys killed at Hartley Colliery, its pedestal carrying the names of all 204 who died when the engine beam broke and sealed the Hester Pit.
Hewlett Pits war memorial plaque	A bronze First World War plaque to the men of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company's Nos. 1 and 2 Hewlett Pits at Hart Common, Westhoughton: one of nineteen the company put up at its pits and works, and the only one still where it was first fixed, on the wall of the colliery's old pay office.
Heworth Colliery war memorial	The memorial to the men of Heworth Colliery, Gateshead, who died in the First World War: a stone memorial unveiled on 16 July 1922, whose whereabouts are now unknown, and a framed Roll of Honour of 120 names that survives at Hopper House, Heworth.
John Peace	A Lemington-born landscape painter and art lecturer (1933–2017) who repeatedly painted the pit country of his Tyneside childhood — six known paintings of the Montagu pit yard at Scotswood after its demolition, the Percy Pit heap of Walbottle Colliery in winter, the Lemington pit village and colliery engines — work his family is still tracing, with hundreds of paintings missing.
John Piper's photograph of Wheal Friendly	Among the 5,870 photographs John Piper gave the Tate in 1987 is a negative of the Wheal Friendly engine house at St Agnes, one of 144 he took in Cornwall. The painter who made bombed churches a national subject photographed the abandoned tin mine as a ruin in the landscape; a blog dates the picture to 1933 and ties it to his work for the Shell Guides.
Life Dahn t'Pit	Life Dahn t'Pit, 'life down the pit', is the miners' memorial at Oakwell Hall Country Park, Birstall: a sculpture of two miners at work beneath a great overhang of coal, standing where Gomersal Colliery's men once boarded the coolie car. The Spen Valley Civic Society commissioned it and retired miners made the inscribed pavers round it; it was opened in August 2005.
Lofthouse Colliery Disaster Memorial	The Lofthouse Colliery disaster memorial is a seven-sided obelisk on Batley Road at Wrenthorpe, near Wakefield, standing above the place where seven miners were trapped when water burst into Lofthouse Colliery on 21 March 1973. It names the seven, only one of whom was ever brought out, and is ringed by seven small trees; a service is held there each anniversary.
Methley Mining Memorial	A terracotta relief of a miner leading a pit pony, set in the wall of the former Savile Colliery site at Methley, near Leeds. Made by the former miner Harry Malkin, it commemorates the village's pits: Savile, Newmarket, Methley Junction, Foxholes and the Parlour pit.
Norman Cornish	A Spennymoor pitman who went underground at Dean and Chapter Colliery, Ferryhill, at fourteen in 1933, learned to paint at the Spennymoor Settlement, and kept working as a miner — at Dean and Chapter, Mainsforth and Tudhoe drift — through a national career until 1966, becoming the best-known painter of Durham mining life.
Radcliffe War Memorial	The war memorial of the colliery village of Radcliffe, unveiled in 1928 with 29 names from the First World War and 10 from the Second, whose central element was re-erected in Amble's Town Square when the village was demolished for opencast coal in 1971.
Stargate Pit Disaster Memorials	Two memorials to the 38 men and boys killed at Stargate Colliery in 1826: a stone on the communal grave at Ryton's Holy Cross church, placed by the Ryton Heritage Group in 1993, and a replica colliery tub naming all the dead, unveiled near the pit site in 2018.
Sultan the Pit Pony	A bund of sixty thousand tons of coal shale, raised to shelter the events arena of the country park built on Penallta Colliery's tip, was shaped by the artist Mick Petts into a two-hundred-metre leaping pony and grassed over. The people who live there named it Sultan, after a pony from the pit.
The Angel of the North	Antony Gormley's Angel of the North stands on the reclaimed site of Team Colliery above Gateshead, where coal was worked from the 1720s. Gateshead Council approached Gormley, who was initially reluctant and agreed after visiting the ground; he has said the mining done beneath the site gives it a poetic resonance, men having worked below in the dark where the sculpture now stands in the light. It was raised in February 1998 and is seen by an estimated thirty-three million people a year.
The Ashington Group	The 'Pitmen Painters': a Workers' Educational Association class of Ashington miners, mostly from Woodhorn and Ellington collieries, who began painting in 1934, exhibited in London and China, met weekly for fifty years, and whose permanent collection now hangs at Woodhorn Colliery, now Woodhorn Museum.
The Huskar Pit disaster memorials	The memorials to the 26 children aged seven to seventeen drowned at Huskar Pit, Silkstone Common, on 4 July 1838: the stone obelisk over their common grave in All Saints' churchyard, Silkstone, which names them all, and the figures of two crawling children set up in Nabs Wood for the 150th anniversary.
Tom McGuinness	A Witton Park miner conscripted underground as a Bevin Boy in 1944, who spent 39 years in County Durham's pits and painted them in hunched, tunnel-shaped figures and green-and-blue glazes, leaving what the co-founder of the Gemini Collection of Mining Art calls an unrivalled pictorial record of the coal industry.
Tout Quarry Sculpture Park	A sculpture park in the disused Tout Quarry on the Isle of Portland, begun in 1983 by the Portland Sculpture and Quarry Trust the year after quarrying ended. Sixty to seventy works are carved into its old faces and spoil, among them Antony Gormley's 'Still Falling', and the Trust still teaches stone carving there.
Tudhoe Colliery Disaster Memorial	A five-metre Gothic spire raised by the workmen of Tudhoe Colliery over the graves of the 37 men and boys killed in the explosion of 18 April 1882, carved on all four sides with scenes of a miner's life and death, and listed Grade II.
Tursdale Colliery war memorial	The war memorial of Tursdale Colliery, County Durham: a granite pedestal carrying the names of 41 of the colliery's workmen killed in the First World War, set before the Aged Mine Workers' cottages the miners built as a memorial. Its lost marble soldier was replaced in 2018 by Ray Lonsdale's steel figure 'Not Much to Ask'.
Wath Main Colliery war memorial plaque	A bronze First World War plaque to the 125 men of Wath Main Colliery killed in the Great War, now in All Saints Church, Wath upon Dearne.
Welsh National Mining Memorial, Senghenydd	The Welsh National Mining Memorial at Senghenydd, unveiled on 14 October 2013, a hundred years after 439 men and boys died at the Universal Colliery. A bronze of one miner leading another to safety stands in a garden whose path of memory has a ceramic tile for each of Wales's 152 mining disasters.

Mining and art

The pitmen painters

The best-known body of British mining art was made by miners. In 1927 the Ashington branch of the Workers' Educational Association advertised a class on evolution; after working through other subjects the members settled on art appreciation, and the WEA and Durham University found them a tutor, the painter Robert Lyon. The men — most of them employed at Woodhorn and Ellington collieries — quickly grew dissatisfied with being lectured at, and Lyon suggested they try painting instead, as a way of understanding what they were being shown.

They met from 1934 to 1983. By 1936 they had drawn up an extensive set of rules and named themselves the Ashington Group, holding their first exhibition at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle; a second followed in 1938 as an extension of the Mass Observation project, and by the early 1940s they had shown in London. Henry Moore and Julian Trevelyan praised their work and Helen Sutherland collected it. Interest waned after the war and the men went on meeting weekly regardless, for another four decades. The critic William Feaver met Oliver Kilbourn in the early 1970s and revived attention; in the 1980s the Group's permanent collection became the first exhibition of western art shown in China after the Cultural Revolution. The hut was demolished in 1983, Kilbourn put the paintings in trust before his death in 1993, and they are held today at Woodhorn. Feaver's book on the Group was adapted by Lee Hall as the play The Pitmen Painters.

County Durham had its own version at the Spennymoor Settlement, whose art school was known as the Pitman's Academy. Norman Cornish joined it at fifteen, having started work underground at fourteen in 1933, and went on painting the pit rows, the bars and the men walking to work for the rest of his life; he did not leave mining to paint full time until 1966, more than thirty years after he started. Herbert Dees, Robert Heslop and Tom McGuinness came out of the same institution. What distinguishes this work from most industrial art is simply that its makers were not visiting.

Painters who came to the coalfields

Others arrived from outside and stayed. Josef Herman, a Polish-Jewish refugee who saw himself in a line of European painters of working people running back through Courbet, Millet and Van Gogh, went to Ystradgynlais in the Swansea valley in 1944 for a fortnight and remained eleven years, becoming enough a part of the village to be called Joe Bach. Commissioned in 1951 to paint a mural for the Festival of Britain, he painted six miners resting above ground after their shift, and afterwards called it the most important picture he did in Wales. He left in 1955 because the damp was ruining his health, and took the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod in 1962.

Banners

The largest body of art the industry commissioned for itself hangs, once a year, from poles. Each lodge of the miners' union had its banner, carried behind a brass band; at the Durham Miners' Gala they are marched to the old racecourse and new ones are blessed in the cathedral. Their imagery is a record of what the coalfields thought about themselves: miners' leaders and politicians, and at Chopwell — 'Little Moscow' — the only banner to carry both Marx and Lenin, an earlier version of which toured the Soviet Union in 1935 and has not come back. Alongside the socialism runs scripture doing the same work, most often the Good Samaritan with 'Go ye, and do likewise' beneath it. A banner is replaced rather than retired, so a single lodge's successive banners record how its politics and its losses changed.

Monuments on the ground the pits left

The last category is the newest: art placed on reclaimed colliery ground, where the subject is the absence of the industry rather than its work. The largest is the Angel of the North, which stands on the reclaimed site of Team Colliery above Gateshead — a connection Gormley made explicit, and the reason it appears in this archive at all. These works are not made by miners or commissioned by lodges, and they raise a question the earlier categories do not: who a monument on a colliery site is for, once the people who worked it are gone.

Sources

(secondary) Angel of the North — Wikipedia
(secondary) Ashington Group — Wikipedia
(secondary) Durham Miners' Gala — Wikipedia
(secondary) Josef Herman — Wikipedia
(secondary) Norman Cornish — Wikipedia

Category page created: 4 September 2026 · Last researched: 4 September 2026