Photo Poem: Wet Earth Colliery, matched to "Miners" by Wilfred Owen

A little introduction ..

This combination of images and words means a lot to me because it is the first time I matched the two forms, when I produced a photo book (a single copy, printed online just for myself and my family) of the remains of the Wet Earth Colliery in Clifton, Greater Manchester. It also led to me producing the book that became the Turret for a King blog post on here, when I discovered that the poem had been written in Scarborough where I had recently visited.

I had the great fortune years back of being given a tour of the colliery site by one of the men who had excavated the mine in the late 90s and it was a wonderful experience. He even opened a few parts of it up and we tentatively ventured a few feet inside the entrances while he showed me pick-marks and candle wax on the walls and tools still rusting in pools of water inside. However in the early 2000s it was permanently shut due to public health risks and it has been sealed ever since, with nature reclaiming much of the site which is now a very nice country park with a large lake and a children's playground.

Since then I have been acutely aware of that world beneath the valley that other people are often unaware of, whose stone and metal remnants now peek from the undergrowth. A world of miles of (now flooded) tunnels, still with mine carts in them and the footprints of men long since gone that dog walkers and families visiting the country park above have no idea exists. It's also nice to know that I am in good company in trying to represent it with images, as LS Lowry also recorded it with a sketch in 1925, just three years before it closed when the seams ran dry of coal. This is it here and incidentally some of the large stones pictured in my images (particularly the one that has a metal bar bent and sticking out from it) are the actual footings for the pithead you can see here:

Wet Earth Colliery, Dixon Fold, 1925 by L.S. Lowry

In terms of the photographic style I ended up choosing, I have played for years with different styles in the many times I have pictured it, but I felt an antique wet collodion-style would suit it very well given the age of the site. I also decided to try a square format as I am looking to buy a 6 x 6 film camera so thought the restriction would be good for me to practice. Lastly I decided to use a soft vignette border because I think it adds to the idea that I am peeking into a hidden world.

All that said, I hope you enjoy!

---

There was a whispering in my hearth,

    A sigh of the coal,

Grown wistful of a former earth

    It might recall.

I listened for a tale of leaves

    And smothered ferns,

Frond-forests, and the low sly lives

    Before the fauns.

My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer

    From Time's old cauldron,

Before the birds made nests in summer,

    Or men had children.

But the coals were murmuring of their mine,

    And moans down there

Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men

    Writhing for air.

And I saw white bones in the cinder-shard,

    Bones without number.

Many the muscled bodies charred,

    And few remember.

I thought of all that worked dark pits

    Of war, and died

Digging the rock where Death reputes

    Peace lies indeed.

Comforted years will sit soft-chaired,

    In rooms of amber;

The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered

    By our life's ember;

The centuries will burn rich loads

    With which we groaned,

Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,

    While songs are crooned;

But they will not dream of us poor lads,

    Left in the ground.

"Miners" by Wilfred Owen, Scarborough 1917