Coal mining in Lancashire has taken place for hundreds of years, creating countless small communities that relied on coal to support them. Generations of men and boys have worked coal seams in this area, and in 1910, 2,500 coal miners worked the five coal seams of Manchester Coalfield - Pretoria Colliery. On December 21st 1910, 344 men and boys died after an explosion of accumulated gases at the coal face in what is the third-worst mining disaster in British history.
For a small mining community, the impact of so many dead was huge, leaving a lasting impression in the minds of the survivors that is still as evident today as it was then. Memorials to the men and boys dot the surrounding area, with Westhoughton Parish Church displaying a memorial gravestone and nearby Market Street home to a memorial that was commissioned for the centenary of the disaster.
However, the site of the colliery itself was home to only a modest memorial, erected in the 60s, and this had become overgrown and fell into disrepair. Tony Hogan, himself a former miner, made it his mission to ensure a fitting and eternal memorial to the victims of the disaster was erected on the site of the colliery.
The stones were designed to hold all 344 names of the dead, as well as their ages to really underline just how young some of the victims were.
Valencia Communities Fund was happy to fund such an important memorial to ensure that the people of Atherton and the surrounding area may remember the names of a generation lost to the disaster.
