Banner mystery solved - March 23rd 2009
Some careful detective work by Woodhorn Collections Assistant, Deborah Moffatt, has finally solved the mystery of a long lost miners' banner. The whereabouts of the Netherton Colliery banner can now be disclosed after being missing for twenty six years.
The banner was deposited by the National Union of Mineworkers with Northumberland Record Office back in 1974 after the Netherton Colliery closed, and it remained there until 1981 when it was transferred to the NUM Head Office at Burt Hall in Newcastle. The exact whereabouts of the banner became unclear from then with many people trying to track it down. A photograph deposited with the County Archives Service showed that the Netherton banner was remarkably similar to the Seaton Burn and Brenkley banner which had been deposited at then Woodhorn Colliery Museum in 1990. Investigations suggested however that the banner had been made during the Miners' Strike in 1984.
The mystery was finally solved this year with the assistance of Caroline Rendell, a textile conservator, who proved that the banners were one in the same. The panel bearing Seaton Burn and Brenkley had been affixed over the original name, and the original letters can be made out using touch.
The reusing of banners by other lodges has happened before: the old Newbiggin Colliery banner became the Lynemouth Colliery banner when the majority of men were transferred to Lynemouth after Newbiggin closed in 1967.
The Seaton Burn and Brenkley and Lynemouth banners are two of a collection of sixteen banners deposited at Woodhorn by the Northumberland branch of the NUM. The remaining banners of the collections are Ashington Federation Banner, Bomarsund, Cambois and Bates, Dr Pit, Ellington, North Seaton, North Walbottle, Pegswood, Rising Sun, Seghill, Sleekburn A, West Sleekburn, Whittle and Woodhorn. A further six Northumberland banners are elsewhere: another Ashington Federation banner from the 1940s, Ashington Group of Collieries banner, Backworth Federation, Burradon and Weetslade, Cowpen and Crofton, and the Dudley and Brenkley banners.
The importance of the banner to the men of the union branch cannot be emphasised enough. The miners' aspirations for a better working life is emblazoned on their banner; their heroes, the portraits of men that drove the way forward for reform in the mining industry are held in front as they march behind them. In bad times the banner would be draped in black to signify the deaths of their members.
The first new Northumberland Miners' Banner made since the decline of the coal industry was produced earlier this year. The NUM together with the Aged Mineworkers Partnership and Northumberland County Council produced a banner with Heritage Lottery Fund money to be used on special occasions. It was dedicated and blessed at Woodhorn and still instils the messages of solidarity, unity, determination and hope that are important to miners and their families.
Woodhorn has a total of 23 banners in its collection, five of which are on display at any one time.
For more information about collections at Woodhorn check out the website