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North Staffs Mines Rescue
Research by John Lumsdon
The original North Staffordshire Mines Rescue Station was opened by the North Staffordshire Colliery Owners Association in a converted house in January 1911. The Chief Superintendent was Mr. Walter Clifford.
There were no training galleries and exercises with breathing apparatus were confined to the men running up and down stairs, and to burning sulphur to represent practices in smoke. No vehicles were available for transport and early records indicate that the Rescue Station relied on local taxi cabs for several years. Early on, it was recognised that the converted house was totally unsuitable for use as a Rescue Station, and two cottages at Berry Hill colliery were converted for use as a Rescue Station in July 1911.
A wooden gallery was constructed at the end of the cottages for practices. The interior of the gallery was on the same lines as most galleries in use as the present day, and was designed to represent as nearly as possible, the conditions underground after an explosion. Initial training of rescue men resumed, with two teams of six men per day, one day per week for 13 weeks. In all at the end of the 13th week, only four teams were examined by the Rescue Committee and passed as certified Brigades men on the 16th and 17th of October 1911.
There should have been ten teams examined that week, but on Wednesday the 19th October 1911, a telephone message was received at the rescue Station, to the effect that a serious fire had broken out at the Birchenwood colliery, and assistance was required immediately. Taxi cabs were called, and the apparatus and men were at the colliery in less than half an hour. It is also interesting to note that, before the other six teams could be examined on completion of their 13 week training, they were called upon to be engaged in rescue work with breathing apparatus both at the Birchenwood colliery fire and also at the Jamage colliery where an explosion occurred, killing six men on 25th November 1911.
Early in 1913, a 16-20 H.P. Enfield car fitted with a van body built to a specified design was purchased for the rescue station.
During “The Great War” 1914-18, Training and quarterly practices were carried out in a systematic manner at the Berry Hill Rescue Station, broken at intervals by attendance at various collieries for bricking up Gob fires, stopping off bodies of gas, attending whilst ventilation was being changed in particularly fiery mines and similar work which falls within rescue mans programme.
The above is quoted for an article by Mr. Walter Clifford, chief superintendent of the North Staffs Colliery Association, Rescue Station Stoke, in the “Safety News and Chronicle” published in March 1922. It also provided instructors for the “Army School” where tunnellers were trained.
Shortly after the Armistice, a Buick ambulance, which had been in use in France, was allotted to the Rescue Station.
On the closure of Berry Hill colliery in 1959, the pit head baths building was converted, at a cost of £20.000, into the new North Staffordshire Rescue Station. It was officially opened in March 11th 1962.
With only Hem Heath and Silverdale collieries remaining, the areas only rescue, purpose built at the Berry Hill colliery, finally closed on 8th September 1994.