Hi, Hopewell Colliery is hosting my free one-day-only exhibition about Waterloo Colliery, where my grandfather worked. It might be of interest to anyone with ancestors who worked at Waterloo or any Forest Mine. Drop by if you're interested and have a chat. I am very interested to hear about anyone who worked there, names, any memories, family stories, memorabilia and of course any photos; or just a general interest in coal mining and the Forest of Dean. Any time between 10.30 am and 4.00 pm. Steven.

Remembering the Waterloo Colliery
(aka the Arthur and Edward, Upper Lydbrook)
On Sunday 30th June 2019

To mark the 70th anniversary of Waterloo’s 1949 flooding, Hopewell Colliery is hosting a free exhibition of old photographs and maps of the Waterloo Colliery, one the Forest’s deep mines. I have gathered this collection of over thirty photographs showing the colliery buildings, the Waterloo Creeper, workers, scenes from the 1949 rescue, some underground maps and a detailed site plan.

Drop by at any time from 10.30 am until 4.00 pm. Memories or old photos especially welcome.
Entrance to the exhibition is free. Refreshments available at the Hopewell Café.

For directions and amenities, see Hopewell’s website: http://www.hopewellcolliery.com/index.html.

We look forward to seeing you. Steven Carter.

You don’t mention if you have explored the British Newspaper Archive in relation to this colliery. If not there are several hundred references which might be of interest. They range from records of donations to the Gloucester Royal Infirmary, accounts of the 1949 flood, reports of accidents and, amongst those, of at least 16 named fatalities. If you would like any further details of anything specific I can probably provide them.

Hi Mike,
Thank you for this information. I did have a temporary subscription on the British Newspaper Archive for a short time; and gathered about a dozen or so articles in my initial researches about the 1949 Flooding. But, I must admit, it seems that I missed a lot.
I never came across anything, for example, about donations to the Gloucester Royal Infirmary. And didn't realise that there were several hundred references!
Thank you for drawing my attention to an excellent source for future research. I'd hope to go through it exhaustively.
For now, if there's anything you could recommend about: descriptions of the site, working life of the miners, or photographs. If you could recommend some possible categories/headings/key-search-terms for using the British Newspaper Archive, based on how you achieve such rich results, that would be a great help.
Many thanks,
Steven.

Hi Steven,
re your asking for advice about searching the BNA site, you'll find we've already discussed this on this forum, if you go to the post below it's subsequent follow-ups in the same thread, you should get some pointers. And don't forget the site is free to search, for which you don't need a sub - so with preplanning, when you do actually sign-up for a sub then you should already be well-placed to find the best items without wasting too much time. In general my advice is to use the site's filters to only search our specific area, namely Gloucestershire, but after that be quite general with your search terms - many search engines give the best hits using the "less is more" method, too much search info such as people's specific names often confuses the character recognition software these sites use. eg also search "Lydbrook colliery" rather than "Waterloo colliery" - there are hundreds of different Waterloos around the country, but not many Lydbrooks.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your exhibition, I just wish I could be there too.
atb Jeff

(these links are best viewed by opening in a new tab or window).
http://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=36876

Another excellent resource which often covers our area, but is entirely free, is the Welsh Newspapers site.
http://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=40632

PS I guess you've probably already seent this excellent web page about the pit, written by Ian Pope who used old newspapers etc for much of his information. Are you in contact with him, if not he's definitely worth approaching.
http://lightmoor.co.uk/forestcoal/CoalA%26E.html

There’s some good advice from Jeff there. I got a lot of my hits from searching Gloucestershire for “Waterloo Colliery” and “Arthur and Edward Colliery”. In this particular instance the quotation marks are important because otherwise you will get the hits diluted by many references to the individual names. Substituting “Pit” for “Colliery” gets a few more. Of course some of the hits are spurious because they refer to collieries outside Gloucestershire and some are merely reports of the same news in different papers.

The payments were part of something called the Workpeople’s Contributory Scheme. I have not followed up exactly what it was but it looks like, drawing on the nineteenth-century traditions of mutual benefit societies and thrift agencies as well as the culture of trade unions, co-operative societies, and friendly societies, a kind of precursor to the NHS whereby access to treatment could be more or less assured in return for the contributions. They brought together small contributions to pool risk and costs for the workers. E.g. The Gloucester Citizen - Saturday 24 June 1933 – reported the receipt by Gloucester Royal Infirmary of £32 19s 6d from the Arthur and Edward in the week ending 14/06/33. There are plenty of other examples and plenty more companies also made contributions.

These were the 16 fatalities,

Gloucester Journal Saturday 02 February 1856
Warrie WILLIAMS died falling down the pit whilst being drawn up.

Gloucestershire Echo Tuesday 05 May 1914
Henry CHARLES killed by a fall of pipes.

Gloucester Journal Saturday 14 August 1915
John Henry LODGE (37) killed by a fall of coal.

Gloucestershire Chronicle Saturday 25 January 1919
James SMITH (27) killed by a fall of rock.

Gloucester Journal Saturday 18 June 1921
Godfrey MORGAN (40) killed by a fall of roof.

Gloucester Citizen Wednesday 21 February 1923
Edward WATKINS (56) killed by a fall of coal

Gloucester Citizen Thursday 16 June 1927
Godfrey MORGAN (49) died in hospital after being caught by a fall of dirt whilst replacing a prop on April 22.

Gloucester Citizen Tuesday 14 August 1928
Elon WILLIAMS (74) killed by runaway trams.

Cheltenham Chronicle Saturday 01 December 1928
George SCRIVENS (32) killed by a fall of coal and dust.

Gloucester Citizen Saturday 22 October 1932
Oscar Miles DUBERLEY (57) Died of scalds when a boiler pipe burst.

Gloucester Citizen Friday 07 May 1937
William Arthur ORPEN, caravan dweller, asphyxiated in old abandoned airway.

Gloucester Citizen Wednesday 01 February 1939
The funeral report of Horace COOK (23)who died following an accident at Waterloo Colliery.

Gloucester Citizen Thursday 24 August 1939
Eli WILLIAMS died 10 months after receiving spinal injuries from a fall of coal.

Gloucester Journal Saturday 10 January 1942
Lewis Francis William SIMMONDS (39) Died when hit by runaway trucks.

Gloucester Citizen Wednesday 25 February 1948
Charles WILLIAMS (60) died crushed by a truck.

Gloucester Citizen Monday 19 June 1950
Hubert William TAYLOR (47) killed by a fall of coal.

Hi Jeff,
That was very helpful. I've used the free online Welsh newspapers for family history, but not really for Waterloo and not in the more diverse way you've suggested.
I have contacted Ian Pope and a considerable number of the photos I'll be showing are ones he gave me permission to display.
I found your advice and the forum helpful. I've used this site a lot, but never got to grips with the forums. That's another resource I'll definitely be making more use of in the future.
Thank you.
Steven

Hi Mike,
Thank you for all this information.
It is very much appreciated, esp that list of the fatalities. I'll need to check, but I think I came across one of these in Christchurch graveyard - a memorial stone, which mentioned Waterloo.
Steven.

I believe Lewis Simmonds was my Grandfathers half brother. Son of Alice nee Mason and Henry Aaron Simmonds.