Webmaster Ian Winstanley

BACKGROUND:- Detail from the St Helens Mining Monument by

Thompson Dagnall

BUT FIRST A MESSAGE FROM MY SON:- Hi there, The endless gloomy news cycle has prompted me to publish 'B-spine', my own tale of dystopian futures and eco-doom, on Amazon Kindle. B-spine is a cyberpunk-inspired police procederal thriller interlaced with action and shot through with a lot of comment about the unsustainability of modern living. It can be read on Amazon Kindle plus Android and iPhone devices, iPads, PCs and Macs. A recent review in SFX magazine said it was "Guaranteed to keep you clutching your Kindle till the end" and the first 40 pages are available to read for free on Amazon... just type in the name of the book. Here's the back cover blurb: It's 2098 in the North American Union and biotechnology isn't creating a better tomorrow, it's maintaining a cold, dark and bloody today. A crumbling dystopia of breathing buildings and weaponized insects, where corporations rule cities and mercenaries conduct business takeovers at gunpoint. But unless Kirsty Powell can discover what really happened at Arclights nightclub, it's a future that ends for her in seven days… She knows how to spot malfunctioning livedrives &endash; it's her job. Their hardware linkages wear out, their wetware components succumb to disease, parasites and age. But to see one notch up a bodycount on a nightclub dancefloor, that's a first. No one was supposed to see that. Kirsty wishes she hadn't. B-spine is a fast-paced cyberpunk technothriller that pitches an unlikely heroine into an unwinnable battle against the men who control an all-too-believable alternate future. Its combination of biotech weaponry and street-level police procedural plotting makes it a violent, visceral ride &endash; Children of Men meets The Wire.

WHAT'S NEW THE COAL MINING HISTORY RESOURCE CENTRE Home of the UK's NATIONAL DATABASE OF MINING DEATHS AND INJURIES Compiled by Ian Winstanley HAS MOVED _________________________________________ What 'WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE' magazine said about the site.

THE DIARY OF ROGER LOWE - Lancashire's Samuel Pepys

 

Roll of Honour Lists of names of men women and children who have given their lives or have been injured in the pursuit of coal. To date there are about 200,000 listed.

THE BRITISH COALFIELDS Notes on the coalfields produced in pamphlets by the NCB in the1950s giving a view of the future prospects for coal in the country.

PARKSIDE COLLIERY EMPLOYMENT LIST 1993 List of names of most of the final workforce at Parkside Colliery, Newton-le-Willows.

POETRY CORNER A selection of original mining poems

COLLIERY SCRAP BOOK