Interviewees

I have quite a lot of recorded material to work through, and this is proving to be quite a task. I have recorded several people talking about various subjects and the ones listed below are just those I have so far edited and added to this archive. More will be added to this site later, as I also have an extensive list of volunteers who I am hoping to interview in the near future.

Jeff Sanderson
Jeff was born in Fishlake around the end of WW2. When he was 4 years old, he moved to Haggs Wood in Stainforth, where he lived with his grandparents. His description of the Haggs Wood area from that time is very interesting and one can only admire the tenacity of his grandparents, who lived in conditions that few could imagine in this day and age.

Val Weir
Val (short for Valence) was born in Duke Street Stainforth in 1937. In 1944 his family moved to Stanley Gardens where they lived for many years. In 1945, after the war in Europe was declared over, Val joined many of the other Stanley Gardens children in a street party to celebrate the national holiday which was declared "V.E. Day". He attended Junction Road Junior Boys, and later Thorne Grammar School. After working at various places, including Hatfield Main, Val became unhappy with the way his life was unfolding here in England, and so, in the middle of the 1960's, Val made a life changing decision and emigrated to New Zealand. He has returned "home" on a couple of occasions, and it was on this, which he declares will be his last, return to Stainforth and Dunscroft during which I managed to record an interview.
In August 2005, after spending ten weeks living in Dunscroft and driving all over the country to see his many relatives, Val returned to his home in The Bay of Plenty, on the North Island of New Zealand.

John Dewsnap.
John, or Johnny as he is known to his many friends, was born in Barnsley in 1924. His family moved to Queens Crescent in Stainforth in 1930, later moving to Duke Street. John attended Junction Road School, where he was a keen football player.
When John left school at the age of 15, he went straight to the pit to seek work, as was common for many of Stainforth's school leavers then and for the next four decades. Shortly after John began working at Hatfield Colliery, the war in Europe began. This was the spark that burned horribly into WW2.
In 1941 John answered the call to join the LDV, and it this subject that takes up much of the recorded interview.

Tom Shearman.
Tom was born in Manchester in 1921, where he was the son of a grocer. His family moved to Doncaster before the second world war, during which time Tom served abroad in Asia. Later, after working for many years at Doncaster's railway plant as a wages clerk, Tom moved to Thorne. During the early part of the war Tom was a member of the Doncaster LDV. He had just turned 84 years old when I talked with him, but his memories of his childhood in Manchester and his teenage years in Doncaster are still very clear.

Thomas Melvin
Thomas Melvin was born in Durham in 1925. Like his father, young Tom went to work in the local colliery as soon as he left school. At the age of fifteen, in 1940, Tom moved to Stainforth to seek work at Hatfield Main Colliery.
The following year, 1946, Tom answered the call to join the Local Defence Volunteers, and became a member of Stainforth "B" Company, which was based at Hatfield Main.
When I spoke with Tom, he told me that being a member of the LDV was very much like taking part in the hilarious BBC comedy, "Dad's Army". Their training consisted of marching up and down in the pit yard on Sunday mornings, with brush handles carried over their shoulders as makeshift rifles, and of course, the very unpopular route marches.
One of the main duties of Company "B" was guard duty at the nearby Lindholme air base, where they were in charge of the main gate at night, but they also took their turns at guarding local bridges and other areas that were considered as possible targets for a German invasion force.
After the war was over, Tom returned to Durham. It wasn't long though before he returned to Stainforth, where he has lived ever since.

Steve Nesbitt
Just like so many other families, the Nesbitts arrived in Stainforth sometime around the end of the 1920's decade.
Steve says his father brought the family here in 1929, but his brother is adamant it was a couple of years later, in 1931. Since Steve was born in 1925 and he recalls being around four years old at the time they arrived in Stainforth, 1929 would probably be correct.
Regardless of the exact date, the Nesbitt story is identical to that of many others. Steve's father worked in the coalfields of Durham and was drawn to Stainforth after hearing about the new pit from his brother in law, Edward Longstaff. Edward was a buttyman (an official who chose the day's workforce from the men assembled and offering themselves for work) at Hatfield Main. He arranged a job for Steve's father and, as they say, the rest is history.
Steve says that he recalls being brought to Stainforth on the back of a lorry belonging to Billy Moor, who owned a fruit shop on Station Road at that time. He particularly remembers how bitterly cold it was, as the family huddled together on the back of the lorry with their meagre possessions.
After attending school for ten years, starting at Junction Road Infants, Steve began work on the screens at Hatfield Main Colliery in the early summer of 1939. He was just fourteen years old, still a child in short pants, when he walked down the pit lane and entered into a world of dirt, dust, noise, and danger, among the working men of Hatfield. Coal mines are incredibly dangerous places, the machinery and conditions maiming and killing those who toiled there with startling regularity.
Shortly before Christmas of that same year, December 12th 1939, Steve was involved in a horrific incident in the shafts at Hatfield, when the cages which carried the men to and from work ran out of control, with disastrous consequences.
See Hatfield Colliery 1939, where you can listen to Steve's account of the Hatfield cage crash first hand.

Back