The 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:

‘Today, Tuesday 10th February I went along to St Bartholomew’s CofE Primary School to join Year 5’s ceramic workshop. This was led by Neil West, from Bolton’s Department of Children’s Services.

The aim was to create a pair of boots in clay dedicated to the memory of one of the 344 miners who was killed in the Pretoria Pit disaster of 1910. Over the course of the

collaboration it is expected that each individual miner will be remembered.

I was honoured to be able to sit alongside the children creating our boots and chatting to them about what they’ve learned during the course of the collaboration. Each pair is as unique as the miner who was commemorated.

These particular boots will be displayed later on Westhoughton Library.

The photos show some work produced by the children but not their faces at the request of the school.

Thank you to the Head Mr Johns, class teacher Mr Hoodless and the wonderful Yr 5 pupils of St Bartholomew’s School for your warm welcome. I thoroughly enjoyed working with you and helping cleaning up afterwards. It’s all part of the experience!’