Pretoria Pit Collaboration

The schools in Westhoughton, plus St Andrew’s in Over Hulton, are taking part in a Heritage Lottery funded project - The Westhoughton Pretoria Pit Collaboration. Westhoughton Town Council were happy to recommend this project to Heritage Lottery and were delighted to hear that they’d secured the funding.

Each school has these separate sessions - heritage workshop with historian Alan Davies, research workshop, ceramics workshop making miners boots in miniature, artefacts handling from 1910 era, folk song writing with local musician Corrie Shelley.

The Mayor of Westhoughton, Cllr Gillian Wroe, has attended another of the sessions:

‘Yesterday, Wednesday 25th February I went along to St James (Daisy Hill) CofE Primary School to join Year 5’s artefacts handling workshop. This was led by Neil West, from Bolton’s Department of Children’s Services.

During the session the pupils were shown various items from the era of 1910 when the Pretoria Pit disaster and learned about what life would’ve been like for the miners and their families around that time.

Neil expertly described several artefacts including a pick axe, coal, coal tar soap, candles, miner’s lamp, cap, scarf, boots, snap can and billy can. He gave us fascinating facts in relation to the items touching on history, geography, science and the origin of words. It certainly was an educational experience for the pupils and adults, including me.

I was also delighted to meet Max, the grandson of former Mayor Cllr Linda Thomas. We enjoyed finding her name on the Mayoral Chain.

Thank you to the Head Mrs Robinson, class teachers and the wonderful Yr 5 pupils of St James’s for your warm welcome and to Neil West for your presentation, I thoroughly enjoyed working with all of you.’