In our continuing series on places in labour history, Liz Wood introduces the headquarters building of the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association and its continuing importance now the coal industry has gone.

It is impossible, even by night, to approach the town of Barnsley without seeing the inclined ramp of a surface drift mine or the pulley wheels of one of the larger deep collieries. For this is unmistakably coal country…’
‘Coal in Barnsley Area’, National Coal Board leaflet, 1969

Gazing out of the car window in the 1980s, as we headed north to see my dad’s parents, industry filled the landscape – steelworks, pit wheels and then the West Yorkshire mill chimneys familiar to my family for generations. Barnsley was coal country and the headquarters of the NUM’s Yorkshire Area was at the heart of it.

Built in 1874 for the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association, the initial ornate stone building was a statement of intent by a union that was attempting to re-establish itself after the hardships of an 18-month strike in 1869/70. Designed by local architects Wade and Turner, the HQ is depicted in an early engraving as leading a row of Victorian mansions, bedecked in turrets, gables and moulding, and topped with an ironwork cage supporting a Union flag.

The 1874 building is still a warren of offices, housing the main union administration. Head up the stairs, cross a covered bridge and you move forty years forward in architectural history to the headquarters’ spiritual heart. The 1912 Miners’ Hall opened its doors when UK coal production was at its peak and during ‘the Great Unrest’, the extensive and sometimes violent period of strikes, lockouts and protests between 1911-1914. Reflecting the religiously non-conformist backgrounds of many of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association leaders, this is a secular prayer hall, complete with stained glass and pulpit.

From the beginning, the Miners’ Hall was intended as a place for community use as well as trade union organisation, hosting temperance meetings, lantern lectures and First World War teas for the troops. Within the Hall, the victims of ‘King Coal’ were mourned, nationalisation was celebrated and strikes which affected every British home were co-ordinated and rallied.

Now, more than 150 years after the Victoria Road building first opened its doors, there is no British coal industry and ‘coal country’ has been built over with immense warehouses. As the industry ‘contracted’ in the early 1990s, the centre for Yorkshire miners became the NUM’s national headquarters. The union’s archives, those that had survived the London blitz and a series of office moves, were crammed in every available space from cellar to attic.

For a week or two in 2022, I was privileged to have the Miners’ Hall as my workplace. Breaks from delving in the archives were spent around the old committee room table and exploring the history of the industry through the banners and memorabilia that surrounded us.

The National Union of Mineworkers still exists. There are still former mineworkers who need support with claims for industrial diseases and pensions, campaigns for past injustices to be addressed, and discussions to be had over fuel policy and economic regeneration. But those who were active in coal country decrease with every passing year.

When you step into the Miners’ Hall you are surrounded by the vivid history of a community formed and scarred by its local industry and at the forefront of the British labour movement. ‘The past we inherit, the future we build’ is now the NUM’s motto and they are looking towards trying to safeguard the long-term future of their home, both as a memorial to the past and somewhere which continues to have a community purpose. Recent work at Redhills provides inspiration and a hope that the Miners’ Hall will survive for future generations to step into with awe.

Read more articles in the series ‘A Place in Labour History’.