New Community Display

I was thrilled to be at the heart of a new community project these last few months in being able to tell the story of the Blantyre Pit Disaster. This was a pinnacle moment for Blantyre Project in marking the tragedy in a permanent way, following the last 3 weeks of commemorating the stories of the disaster and these miners lives. I hope you’ve found all the extra mining articles on this site interesting throughout October.

Myself and friend Jimmy Small teamed up once again to complete our Cemeteries Project, and following the success of two new memorials last year to name all the miners, yesterday, Friday 20th October we unveiled a new community display cabinet. This tells the interesting, sad and respectful story of the 1877 disaster, meaning all visitors to the Cemetery are able to read this at their leisure.

Planning permission was sought from authorities and SLC kindly assisted putting the cabinet up. We were certainly up against it fundraising and with delivery going down to the last day, it was touch and go for a moment as to whether we could unveil this ahead of tomorrow’s Anniversary. The cabinet being of composite materials comes with 25 year guarantee.

The Board is situated at the entrance to the Cemetery, not far from the War Memorial and aptly at the entrance to the oldest part of the graveyard where many of the miners are buried. There’s still a few slabs and bark chips to go down. I hope you get a chance sometime to go along and read the storyboards, which were designed and commissioned by Blantyre Project.

Thank you to everybody who donated to help make this possible. All funds were managed by the Miners Welfare. With thanks also to Alex Rochead and Gordon Cook for coming along to mark the ceremony, in the midst of Storm Babet! Here’s some photos from the quiet unveiling.