Qualla: Allerton Bywater Colliery Explosion

Allerton Bywater Colliery Explosion: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It was the tenth shot. George Paley, the day-shift deputy at Allerton Bywater Colliery, had fired nine that morning - the small, controlled detonations that broke coal loose from the thick Silkstone Seam, 385 yards below the West Yorkshire surface. The ninth had gone off without incident at one side of No. 8's gate. Five minutes later he fired the tenth, this one to the right of centre. The methane that had been silently gathering in the workings caught the flame. The blast threw men against rock. By the end of the day, five miners and a pit pony were dead.

Allerton Bywater Colliery Explosion: Monday Morning, 9:30 AM

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It was Monday, 10 March 1930. The colliery belonged to Airedale Collieries Ltd., one of about a thousand miners in the pit when the explosion happened in the Old East District. Roughly 150 of those men were working the Silkstone Seam - a thick coal measure where colliers drilled ...

Allerton Bywater Colliery Explosion: The Men in No. 8

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

George Paley was killed instantly. So was Arthur Richards. Albany Taylor and William Townend, also in No. 8 stall, were badly burned. Herbert Taylor and a colleague in 101 gate had stepped back from the coal face a minute earlier to take a meal - the kind of small ordinary choice...

Allerton Bywater Colliery Explosion: The Pit Corporal's Walk

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Harry Collinson was Harold's father and the pit corporal. He had been making his way toward No. 8 gate to find out why John Allan was late. Forty yards further from the explosion than his son, he was still knocked off his feet. When he got up, he could smell burning. He passed hi...

Allerton Bywater Colliery Explosion: The Inquest's Verdict

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The jury at the inquest returned a verdict of accidental death - methane ignited by the firing of a shot, no negligence attaching to any individual. But the inquest also recorded two observations that read, ninety-five years later, as the closest thing it could manage to a warnin...