Relighter Lamp

An oil safety lamp with a relighting device built into it, so that its flame could be lit again underground without opening the lamp — issued to officials rather than to ordinary workmen.

Historical usage

A flame safety lamp is also a gas detector: the height and shape of the cap above the flame is how firedamp is read, and the burning of the miner's flame lamp remained the approved method of testing for firedamp in British coal mines to the end — Protector's Garforth GR6S, made at Eccles, still is. That made the flame itself a working instrument, and made relighting a problem. Ordinary oil lamps issued to workmen were not made to be relit: if gas put the flame out, the man had to leave his heading and call for a deputy to test the place with a relighter. Deputies, overmen and management carried relighter lamps instead, and used them to test for firedamp and bad air as they made their statutory inspections of their districts. Protector Lamp and Lighting Company have been making miners' flame safety lamps at their Eccles works since 1873, and their Type 6, the traditional deputy's relighter, was carried in British and Australian coal mines until the late 1970s. It has a magnetic lock — it can only be opened with a magnet kept at the surface — and a shut-off ring for gas testing. Collieries also kept relighter stations underground: flameproof closed containers where a workman's lamp could be relit by someone trained to do it. When a lamp was made, all its parts were numbered to match it, and a lamp room rebuilding a damaged lamp would mix and match parts from others.

How it worked

The relighter is worked from outside the lamp, so that the gauze is never opened in a gassy atmosphere. A ratchet on the side of the lamp base, struck with the palm of the hand, drives a wheel inside the lamp which throws a spark onto the wick. The lamp itself is locked shut — the Type 6 by a magnetic lock that needs a magnet to open — so the flame is restored without the seal between it and the air outside ever being broken.

Why it was used

A flame lamp that has gone out in gas is worse than useless: the man holding it has lost both his light and his only means of knowing whether the air around him is safe. Giving officials a lamp they could relight where they stood let them go on inspecting instead of walking out, and kept the one thing that must never happen — a lamp opened in firedamp — out of the situation altogether.

Risks & limitations

Relighter lamps were deliberately not general issue. Putting a means of making a spark into every man's hand in a safety-lamp mine defeats the object, so the device was confined to officials and to supervised relighter stations, and an ordinary workman whose lamp went out had to leave his heading and fetch a deputy to test the place. That is an inconvenience with a cost of its own: the walk takes a man out of his workplace and out of the district, and it is one reason contraband matches were carried underground in defiance of the rules.

Regional variation

None recorded; the lamps were manufacturers' products sold across the coalfields.

Mines associated with this term

Included only where MineArchive's own research gives a reasonable evidential basis — not every mine where this might plausibly apply.

• Cwmtillery Colliery — Blaenau Gwent (well documented example)
  An Eccles Protector relighter lamp survives from this colliery, in chrome and brass, ten inches by three, with all its parts numbered to match — the condition collectors look for, because lamp rooms rebuilt damaged lamps from other lamps' parts.
• Ingham Colliery — West Yorkshire (well documented example)
  Named 3 times in this record, first in the summary: “…1875 and joined underground to Combs, where in 1947 a spark from the relighter of an opened safety lamp caused an explosion that killed 12; it was…”

Disasters associated with this term

Included only where MineArchive's own research gives a reasonable evidential basis, with the nature of the relationship stated — not every disaster where this term might plausibly apply.

• Albion Colliery explosion, 1906 (contextual relationship)
  Named 5 times in this record, first in the summary: “…at work there. It was put down to a spark from an electric lamp relighter.”
• Ingham Colliery explosion, 1947 (contextual relationship)
  Named 3 times in this record, first in the summary: “…opened by cutting its lead rivet, and that a spark from its relighter had fired gas forced out of abandoned workings by a door put in half…”

Sources

1. (secondary) An Eccles Miners Protector Lamp - Relighter — Out Of The Blue Artifacts
2. (secondary) Miners safety lamps (January 2016) — North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers
3. (secondary) Pit Terminology - Glossary — Sutton-in-Ashfield (pit terminology glossary)
4. (secondary) Protector Lamp Type 6 Deputies Relighter Lamp — Protector Lamp & Lighting Company

Record created: 24 September 2026 · Last researched: 24 September 2026