The Ruardean Bears (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Thursday, November 09, 2017, 02:05 (2572 days ago) @ andrewbaldwin

Henry was a collier at Northern united colliery as was his cousin Isaac. William baldwin worked at

To clarify for Tom this presumably was sometime after the Bears incident of 1889, as Northern didn't open until the early 1930s. It had been purchased from the Lydney and Crump Meadow Collieries Co Ltd by Henry Crawshay and Co Ltd, and provided employment for men from the previously closed Crump Meadow and Foxes Bridge Collieries. This 1894 map will give some idea which pits they may have worked at circa 1889,
http://lightmoor.co.uk/forestcoal/Overviewmap.html

Clicking on each map section will enlarge it, for example the uppermost edge of this next one is the Drybrook/Nailbridge area. The black blobs are coal mines, find Hawkwell between the two brown railway lines and this is just north of what became the Northern United site.
http://lightmoor.co.uk/forestcoal/EastDean.html

The dotted "track" running across the map by Hawkwell is now the A4136 twixt Nailbridge and Brierley.
http://www.forestofdeanhistory.org.uk/resources/sites-in-the-forest/northern-united-col...

However this is not a certain method of finding their workplace, as it wasn't unknown for some C20th miners to walk a mile or two to work every day if necessary, altho' probably not in 1894 when there was more work about as can be seen by the many pits on these maps. Sadly few if any employment records survive for the FoD mines.

That same excellent Lightmoor site has histories for most FoD pits, eg
http://lightmoor.co.uk/forestcoal/CoalNorthern.html

To find the home pages and index click on the headgear icon at bottom of each page.