THERE will be a small gathering today at a memorial which stands next to a busy trunk road outside Wakefield in West Yorkshire, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Lofthouse colliery disaster in which seven miners died.

The memorial is three miles from the site of Lofthouse colliery where the miners were part of a workforce of almost 1,000. It stands over the approximate point underground where the men died, and where six of them remain today because their bodies were never recovered.

The reason they were not recovered is the nature of the disaster. The men were among 30 miners working on or near a coal face three miles from the pit bottom — from the bottom of the vertical shaft down which they descended to work. From there they walked or were carried to the pit face lying on their bellies on a conveyor belt — a man-rider.

The face was three miles distant because — as with most deep coalmines in Britain — coal faces moved further from the pit bottom the more coal was taken out. The system is known as advance mining.

At Lofthouse in the early hours of March 21, miners working on 9B District of the Flockton Thin coal seam broke through into an abandoned 19th-century mine shaft.

The shaft was filled with water, sludge and debris. More than three-and-a-half million gallons of water flooded through the coal face from the abandoned shaft — which itself was draining water from other abandoned shafts.

It was not just water. It carried rocks, pit debris and sludge as it hurtled along the roadways leading to and from the coal face.

The men ran. Seven miners did not get out.

Despite the extent of the inrush, there was hope. It was believed that the men could have survived in an air pocket.

A desperate rescue mission was mounted.

The rescue efforts attracted national and international attention. For a week dozens of reporters, camera crews and radio broadcasters were outside the pit yard following and reporting on the rescue efforts.

The families of the trapped men were at the pithead with NUM branch officials, some throughout the rescue efforts, snatching a few hours of sleep when they could.

Rescue Brigades, on permanent standby in every coalfield at any given time, were working below.

Rescuers trained to work underwater as well as underground were brought in.

Eddie Downes, who worked for 23 years at another Yorkshire colliery, Frickley, and is now a mining historian in Wakefield, said: “Obviously the Rescue Brigades came. But it was the whole workforce. All the pit was involved, even the canteen women. They were there 24/7.”

But the water had created such a mangle of flooded wreckage that even the frogmen could not get anywhere near the site of the inrush.

A separate rescue attempt was made by drilling down above the likely location of the men, three miles from the pithead and 750 feet underground.

In a farmers’ field 750 feet above the inrush, three huge "sink" holes had appeared – the tops of three abandoned mineshafts whose water had drained into the pits, causing ground covering the shafts to collaspse. Water could be heard gurgling at the bottom of the emptied shafts.

Dozens of workers gathered to throw straw, bricks rubble down the holes to stop water flowing from thee shafts to the pit face.

Volunteers set up a soup kitchen in the field to sustain the workers attempting to block the bottom of the old shafts

The rescuers’ efforts underground continued for a week but hope was dwindling by the day and by the hour.

On the eighth day, the reality that no-one could have survived the inrush and that the men were dead was finally accepted.

They were Frederick Armitage, 41, Colin Barnaby, 36, Frank Billingham, 48, Sydney Brown, 36, Charles Cotton, 49 (the only miner whose body was recovered), Edward Finnegan, 40, and Alan Haigh, 30.

An inquiry into the disaster was held in Barnsley Civic Hall.

The National Union of Mineworkers was represented by Arthur Scargill who at the time was the compensation agent for the Yorkshire Area of the union.

Scargill had gone underground with the rescue teams at Lofthouse.

He cross-examined the pit’s managers who had given the orders to advance the face, and who were then in the witness box. He cross-examined the National Coal Board surveyors who had researched the mining history of the area before the work began.

It was well-known that the areas of Yorkshire where coalmining was carried out were peppered with old, abandoned mine shafts and workings. There were thousands of them.

Although the existence of old shafts had been known, National Coal Board surveyors had made errors and had not identified the threat from the flooded shaft which lay in the path of the advancing coal face.

Scargill’s research discovered old documents identifying the shafts and the threat they posed.

The inquiry also revealed that there had been indications underground of the presence of large quantities of water nearby. Drill holes and boreholes were filling with water, there were seepages and a particular smell. The indications had been there for weeks before the inrush.

Scargill’s questioning reduced at least one Coal Board official to tears.

One conclusion of the inquiry was that the men had been killed instantly.

One of the outcomes was the introduction of new regulations to prevent a similar tragedy — by identifying in advance, and accurately, the dangers posed by old mine shafts to advancing coal faces.

Downes says: “The most significant outcome after Lofthouse was that the National Coal Board did aerial photography of every pit in Britain and every area around the pit bottom that it would be working. Lofthouse covered thousands of acres.

“Old shafts appear as a circle on an aerial photograph. The aerial photograph of Lofthouse revealed 143 old shafts in the area being worked by the pit.

“At Gomersal pit, it showed 275 old shafts. Gomersal was shut down as a result.”

That’s over 400 abandoned shafts at just two pits.

With that number of abandoned shafts at individual pits it is likely that further tragedies were avoided by aerial photography.

Events marking Lofthouse colliery disaster took place at the weekend, including moving gatherings at which ex-miners who were involved recalled their own experiences. They included two members of the Rescue Brigades involved in the heroic efforts to reach the men.

Fifty years exactly since the tragedy, some will gather at the roadside memorial.

The Lofthouse colliery disaster had a personal effect on me. When it happened I was a 23-year-old reporter who had recently started work at the Yorkshire Evening Post which covered a large part of the Yorkshire coalfield.

I was one of the reporters outside Lofthouse pit yard all that week — my first experience of Yorkshire’s coalmining industry, its miners, their families and its communities.