Qualla: Sneyd Colliery Disaster https://qualla.com/sneyd-colliery-disaster en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/m/sneyd-colliery-disaster-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Sneyd Colliery Disaster https://qualla.com/sneyd-colliery-disaster Sneyd Colliery Disaster: Introduction https://qualla.com/sneyd-colliery-disaster/ Photo credit BiscuitsBeforeBias, CC BY 4.0. The miners of Sneyd Colliery did not work on New Year's Day. There was an old superstition in north Staffordshire that cutting coal on the first day of the year was unlucky, and for as long as anyone could remember the pit had stood quiet on 1 January while the rest of Burslem nursed its hangovers. But it was 1942. Britain was deep into the Second World War, the navy was running on coal, the factories were running on coal, and the men of Sneyd had been asked, like men everywhere, to give up the small comforts the old calendar permitted. They went to work on the morning of 1 January 1942. At 7:50 am, ten minutes into the shift, an underground explosion in No. 4 pit killed 57 of them.

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/m/sneyd-colliery-disaster-wp/gcqm-sneyd-colliery-disaster-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Sneyd Colliery Disaster: Where the Pit Was https://qualla.com/sneyd-colliery-disaster/ Photo credit BiscuitsBeforeBias, CC BY 4.0. Sneyd Colliery sat in the Sneyd area of Burslem, one of the six towns of Stoke-on-Trent and a place built on coal almost as much as on pottery. Mining had been going on here since the eighteenth century. By 1896, Sneyd No. 2 and No. 3 shafts employed a combined 609 men and boys u...

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/m/sneyd-colliery-disaster-wp/gcqm-sneyd-colliery-disaster-where-the-pit-was.mp3 0:06 2 full Sneyd Colliery Disaster: Sparks in the Dark https://qualla.com/sneyd-colliery-disaster/ Photo credit BiscuitsBeforeBias, CC BY 4.0. On the morning of the explosion, 295 men were working in No. 4 pit, which ran half a mile underground. The blast was strong enough to throw men off their feet at considerable distances from where it began. Reg Grocott, an apprentice of sixteen, was blown round a corner and his tr...

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/m/sneyd-colliery-disaster-wp/gcqm-sneyd-colliery-disaster-sparks-in-the-dark.mp3 0:06 3 full Sneyd Colliery Disaster: The Families at the Pit Head https://qualla.com/sneyd-colliery-disaster/ Photo credit BiscuitsBeforeBias, CC BY 4.0. News of the explosion travelled fast through Burslem. Wives, sisters, and mothers ran to the pithead, where the bodies of 16 of the dead were brought up on the first day before the rescuers had to withdraw from the workings due to afterdamp (the suffocating mixture of carbon mono...

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/m/sneyd-colliery-disaster-wp/gcqm-sneyd-colliery-disaster-the-families-at-the-pit-head.mp3 0:06 4 full Sneyd Colliery Disaster: What the Pit Wheel Marks https://qualla.com/sneyd-colliery-disaster/ Photo credit BiscuitsBeforeBias, CC BY 4.0. Sneyd Colliery was eventually connected underground to nearby Wolstanton Colliery, and over the following years coal was increasingly brought to the surface there rather than at Sneyd. The pit at Sneyd closed in the 1960s. Burslem changed shape. The pit cottages were demolished o...

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/m/sneyd-colliery-disaster-wp/gcqm-sneyd-colliery-disaster-what-the-pit-wheel-marks.mp3 0:06 5 full