Fall of Stone

A few stories from this graveyard in Willington: Alder John Henry 08 Jul 1912 aged 17. Haulage, he was working his first shift in the capacity of junction minder on an endless rope system of haulage, the rope being above the tubs. The tubs were knocked off the rope by the latter passing up through a slotted and iron faced plank; by some means the lad got between the rope and the knock-off and his body was sawn in two. Buried: St. Stephen's Churchyard, Willington Cemetery Gardner: Joseph 06 Oct 1911 aged 16. Driver, his duty was to drive tubs of sand from a drift to the shaft bottom and to return with the empty tubs. There was no other traffic along this road and the work was not difficult. He was last seen alive by one of the men in the drift, and was at that time walking out behind a full tub and it is assumed that he overbalanced himself in climbing over the tub to get to the pony's reins, for when found the front pair of wheels had passed over him and he was quite dead. Buried: St. Stephen's Churchyard, Willington Cemetery Sedgewick, William, 08 Dec 1864 aged 10 [Not employed]. Two or three boys were playing near the engine house at Willington Coll. Sunnybrow on Thursday 8 Dec. An iron sheave or drum revolved outside the building about three feet from the ground, and the chain which was drawn round it drew tubs of coal along. When the engine was standing the chain was slack. The boys had got hold of the chain "to get a ride", but when the engine started, one boy's fingers were "fast in the links of the chain and he was drawn up against the drum and torn literally limb from limb." The victim, William Sedgewick was about 10 years old and the son of a widow whose husband had been killed in the same colliery a few years previously. Bracken, Cuthbert, 12 Nov 1902, aged 15, Wheel Boy, he attached two full tubs to the endless rope, and was riding on the rope in front of the tubs ; at a junction, 40 yards away, a "knock-off" is fixed, through which the rope passes, and he was caught between this, the tubs, and the rope, and decapitated

Willington County Durham