That helllhole, Snowdon, not a pit, a pity

I was lucky, but there was always that hell hole across there, Snowdon. They used to carry chaps out of there with heatstrokes (Mr. Sumner)

There's very little collated info available to me on the long term effects of working in heat and damp

Most men at Snowdon carried an eight pint Dudley on their back( a metal water bottle with a cork stopper normally carrying 4 pints ,Ken, our guide, at the national mining, museum had heard they were called Dudleys because they were manufactured in the town of the same name, but also possible this story about the Earl of Dudley connects.). Snowdon men topped up their Dudleys from water tanks sent down the shaft. Men recalled drinking 24 pints a day (the recommended amount for these conditions see HSE doc)

‘It was pitiful at Snowdon. They had tanks there and the lads ‘d swarm around them and the water was cold and you’d see lads gutting the water there. You know the muscles on a fella’s belly-you’d see them go like knotted, cramp, they’d writhe on the floor drinking this cold water, I’d see them bursting and every muscle standing out as if it was knotted all the way down his gut’(Mr Mc Ewan)

AtTilmanstone( less hot) the men would drink from the ponies’ trough, brushing aside black beetles. Perhaps conditions at Tilmanstone were not thought to warrant water tanks for the men. No evidence of ponies at Snowdon, I imagine ponies could not live down there.

‘There was only Snowdon would sign them on and that wasn’t a pit it was a pity-it were red ‘ot.Men had been so long unemployed they were coming and going, coming and going in thousands. ‘ (Mr McEwan)

All quotations from The migration of mining families to the Kent coal fields between the wars