I was friendly with a mine manager who had come from Skelmersdale, he was quite pleased to see us and told us we could start work the next morning, and he said to me "I know you have done a lot of coal cutting so you can take your friend with you. I have just opened a lovely seam out and wanted a man who was used to coal cutting so you have done me a good service". We thanked him and then went to find some lodgings. We got separated as we were only able to find a place for each one but still in the same street, we got these through some Skelmersdale people who had moved from Skelmersdale earlier. The place was called Melton, near Barnsley, about a mile and a half from Darfield Colliery where we were working.
I shall never forget that seam of coal, it was four feet six in height and had a solid rock roof which you could rely on, and the seam itself was as flat as a billiard table. This to me was quite a novelty as I had seen only steep coal seams in Skelmersdale and difficult to work. I really enjoyed working at Darfield and cutting the coal for the colliers was child's play to me. Also I got on very well with the men who used to call me 'Lancs'. This went on for a few weeks then I sent for the wife and son to come and stay with me as the lady of the house said she could fit us up with a room for all three of us. My wife came and brought our son who was just 18 months old but they only stayed three weeks as she got homesick and wanted to go home to her own house. I took them back as far as Manchester to see them home, then I came back to my lodgings and was quizzed by my landlady, "Was this place not good enough for your wife?" I just simply said "Yes she was quite pleased with it, but wanted to be near her mother", after this lot I thought she began to be a bit cool. I stayed with her and her husband for three or four weeks longer but in the meantime I had been seeking fresh lodgings nearer to work.

One of the men on the coal face said would I go with him to a friend of his who lived in Wombell who he thought would fix me up. I went with him and got fixed up nicely with a family of four. I really enjoyed living with this family and have said many times to friends when cooking came up as a subject in our talk "I don't think anyone could cook like my landlady Mrs Parkes from Wombell". I used to relish my dinner when I came home from work and her Yorkshire Pudding was delicious and everything else that she cooked was the same, excellent and good. I enjoyed this homely household while I was there but all good things come to an end. I enjoyed my work and did quite well there but I was gaining nothing after paying for my lodgings and keeping my home going at Skelmersdale and occasionally making a trip home. I stayed for about nine months in Yorkshire and then decided to return home, but with misgivings as I knew the state of coal mining in Skelmersdale was bad. No wonder the colliers in Yorkshire could send coal up the pits at a cheaper rate and also in better working conditions.

I had come back to Skelmersdale and my first thought was finding work, so I went to the Manager of White Moss Colliery, "We have not much choice here at present but I could fix you up as a collier in one of our mines in which we are taking all the pillars out around the shafts, if you care to take it. As you know it won't last long before it will finish". It was Hobson's Choice so I took it and did pretty well there, but I'll admit I was not very keen on the place because we were taking all the support around the shafts out and sometimes it sounded like the place was going to collapse as we took the coal out.
I had been there about three months when my Father asked me would I care to come back to Glenburn again as one of his shotfirers had left him to go to another colliery. I jumped at the chance and again began work at Glenburn but I found there had been great changes at Glenburn. I was sent to go in the Earthy Mine, this was a seam of coal six feet in height, but in the middle was a two feet layer of dirt which made the coal somewhat dirty if not picked out before being loaded in trucks by the waggoner who had to fill the trucks and take them one by one to the main haulage. My work was to fire or blast out the dirt between the layer of coal after the colliers.

At home we were living nice and comfortable in the old Barn House and enjoying it. Every Saturday night we always went to Billy Shaw's picture house and spent a nice evening there. Many times we have had to queue for half an hour to get a seat when a good picture was being advertised in the local papers. Also I have seen Billy Shaw come in front of the screen when a cowboy and indian film was being shown and the youngsters in front were shouting and making a noise. He would say to them "Stop this noise or I'll bungle you all out". I have seen many amusing incidents in this picture house, such as the film breaking down and he would come on stage and say to us all "Dont worry, we will soon patch it up and get it going again. In the meantime the girls will go round with the ice cream to keep your gobs closed".

When I had done a bit of overtime at work and was a bit flushed I and my wife and youngster would take a trip to Liverpool on Saturday morning by the workman's train. We could go to Liverpool return from Skelmersdale for 1 shilling and 3 pennies and have a full day's outing, going in and out of the big stores and sometimes going across to New Brighton for the afternoon which was always a cheap trip by ferry boat. I can always remember those two boats which used to ply between Liverpool and New Brighton, they were the Daffodil and Iris. Other weekends when funds would allow we would enjoy a day at Southport. I can remember the carriage that went across the Marine Lake by rope suspension When I think and look back over the years it's marvelous what man's ingenuity has achieved.

A year or two went by when trouble started brewing up again with the miners. This time it was a long and difficult struggle which lasted 26 weeks. It happened in 1926 and all the people in Skelmersdale were hard put too, to find food as the shopkeepers had gone to their limit helping people who could not pay their bills. Soup kitchens began in many parts to help families in need. This caused the men folk in the town to react strongly against the colliery owners, and this caused many safety workers, who were working to try and keep the pits safe for when the men returned, feared of going down the mines to make and keep them safe. This meant a lot of seams of coal were either flooded or lost through falls of roof. Also many could not get back to work as the colliery owners would not open some of the seams when the strike had finished, and the evil of it all was the men had to go back to work under the same conditions as they came out, sadder and on the poverty line.
Glenburn finished winding coal and its owner bought out the Blaguegate Colliery which belonged to Lord Lathom which we all know as the 'Tuppeny Pits'. Many of us moved also to Blaguegate Colliery, my father still keeping on there as Undermanager. There I was put in charge of a district called the Early Mine, it was a seam of coal two feet six inches in height and it was of fairly good quality coal but had a poor roof which the collier had to contend with as he mined the coal. Also it was costly keeping the roads in good order following the colliers who only used the pick and shovel. While I was on this work I was detailed to look after four colliers who were picked out to open a new seam of coal called the Ravine Mine. It was just two feet high but of high quality coal. These men started it direct from the pit shaft and it was rather a delicate situation 'till we got about a dozen yards from the shaft, then our troubles started. The roof above the coal was very bad and dangerous. We tried different methods to master it, our Manager came down to look at it and decided to close it down as it was too costly, so that ended the Ravine seam and I can say I was not sorry as I disliked it from the beginning. Our Manager at that time was always on the lookout for fresh seams to open up because the old 'Tuppeny Pit' was gradually being worked as they were only thin seams of coal.

We had been living at the old Barn Houses for five years when we decided to look for a larger house for a forthcoming event. We managed to get a terraced house in Clayton Street, Skelmersdale and we had lived there about six months when our second son was born. Both myself and my wife were never overjoyed being here and we had been here about two years when I applied to the Lancashire County Council for a smallholding in Lathom. I never had any experience in any kind of farming but was willing to try and do poultry farming. These smallholdings were not being taken up so well at the time. When I applied for one I was to go to Preston Town Hall to be examined to see if I was a suitable tenant, and after much quizzing they decided to let me have a key for a small holding in Slate Farm Lane, Lathom. This house and holding had been lying vacant for over twelve months and it comprised of an area just under one acre, I was taken up by the place. The place was quite nice but it had no mod-cons; we had to use parrafin for lighting and cooking.

My first job was building a poultry cabin and getting the place ship-shape - while I was doing this I was still working down the pit. I bought 50 laying hens when I had finished the poultry cabin and looked forward to picking a few eggs up to help in keeping the costs down. At the start I began to be encouraged by the little I was making but was always ploughing it back to extend more. Also I cultivated some of the land for our own use in the house in which we always had our own grown food. As time went on I began rearing my own chicks from my own stocks in incubation. I bought half a standard of timber from Preston Docks to build two more cabins to house the young birds. This lot was beginning to make inroads in my spare finance because the cash I was receiving from my laying stocks was being used to feed the young birds. Because I knew I should have to wait five or six months before I could have any revenue from them, coupled with my work down the pit I was doing eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. My biggest worry was could the pits keep going while I built up, as nearly all the mines around were practically finished. The Tuppeny Pit finished winding coal and the coal which had been taken from near the surface in and around a farmers field caused a lot of his drainpipes to be dislocated to which the farmer wanted compensation or the drains be put right. My eldest brother and myself and another young fellow were asked would we take on the work because he wanted to keep us on his payroll because the owner of the old colliery was negotiating for a new seam of coal which lay under a farmers land in Cobbs Brow, Lathom, and we had a nice comfortable six months draining and it was nice weather at the time.

The Manager came to us one day and said "I want you three to start work opening the Cobbs Brow seam". We began this work to find the coal first and it did not need much to locate it, as it cropped out near the surface where we had bored for it. The Manager employed three more colliers so that it could be worked in two shifts, day and afternoon, I taking one shift and my brother the other shift. We soon had it moving because we dare not take it more than twelve feet wide at the start for the sake of keeping our roof strong above us. The seam was only two feet six inches in height but of a fair quality coal and it was called the Mountain Mine. Going two shifts we soon made more room for extra men to start work on either side of the decline we were taking down. We had gone about forty yards down when the Manager took on another eight men to work on each side taking coal out to make more room for other colliers. By the time we had opened the mine out we had twenty four colliers and six waggoners. These comprised the total in both shifts working on the coal. There were six men on the surface looking to the needs of the men below, also attending to the perpendicular boiler to keep steam up for the engine which wound the coal up the incline. The working conditions were pretty good, our worst trouble was surface water when it rained heavily but this only affected the three men who were driving the main brow down. A train of three water barrels was used by the men to bucket the water out and then was drawn to the surface to be emptied. Everybody was happy and contented, we who were householders were allowed five cwts (hundredweight) of coal every month. But as the old saying goes, all good things come to an end. We finished this seam in just over twelve months.