Qualla: Peckfield Colliery disaster

Peckfield Colliery disaster: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It was 7:15 in the morning on 30 April 1896, and the men of the Peckfield pit had just lit their candles to start the day. One of those candles, somewhere along the West Level 943 yards from the downcast shaft, met a thin invisible drift of methane that had seeped from a crack in the roof. A village in Yorkshire heard what a cyclist six miles away described as the boom of a cannon, and 105 men knew they were not all going home.

Peckfield Colliery disaster: Three Days a Week

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Peckfield Colliery had been working short hours for weeks. Three paid days, the rest unpaid - the rhythm of a coal economy that paid only when coal moved. On Thursday 30 April, no coal was scheduled to come up, which meant no wages. The 105 men who descended that morning were dat...

Peckfield Colliery disaster: The Explosion

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A slight fall in the roof in Goodall's gate cracked open a pocket of firedamp. A candle flame found it. Two miners and their pit ponies died at the instant of ignition. Four more died as they began to run. Then something worse happened: the explosion churned up coal dust from the...

Peckfield Colliery disaster: The Trapped

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Of the 105 men in the pit, 24 died in the explosions themselves. The other 39 died in the hours that followed, trapped by collapsed roofs and breathing what miners called afterdamp - the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide that fills a pit after a fire and kills more reliably than...

Peckfield Colliery disaster: Twenty-Five Thousand Mourners

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The first rescuers - three night deputies who had just finished their shift - went down at 8:30 a.m. and were blocked by a wrought-iron steam pipe blown across the shaft. By 8:50, the Peckfield and Garforth managers had arrived and worked the cage past the obstruction. Doctors ca...

Peckfield Colliery disaster: What Remains at Micklefield

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The inquest verdict on 20 May was that the explosion was accidental, that no blame attached to any person, that firedamp had met a naked light. The owners switched to Routledge Newcastle safety lamps, as recommended. The pit kept producing coal for decades more. Today the village...