Pub Sign Study – The New Miners – Moston North Manchester

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The Moston Miner’s Estate and its Miner’s Club were a major part of my community as I grew up. Though born in the nearby North Manchester suburb of Miles Platting in 1962, we moved a few miles North to Moston when I was about five in 1967, and among my earliest memories was seeing miners in pit helmets walking round and visiting local shops. Our pits had closed by then, officially in 1950, but as late as the late 60's some of the miners still had a care-taking role on the old colliery connections to the nearby Bradford Colliery pits (Yes, Manchester has a Bradford, not just Yorkshire). Though the mining industry was dying, their community always clung to the name, The Miner’s Estate, and it neighboured on where I still live by Broadhurst Park. The Miner’s Club was originally a large bath house where the miners coming up from the bowels of the Earth at knocking off time used to scrub the coal off before going home. As the pit laid off more and more men, the building was used more and more as a social hub, and though the last miners hung up their helmets by 1969, the club endured until the 1980’s by which time it was seen as just another working class boozer until it was closed in the 1990’s. Little could be done with the land as crumbling old and in many cases flooded mine-shafts below ground means heavy building work above is not feasible. The building was just left to rot. Quite unexpectedly in 2013, the club reopened as a multi-functional community hub, containing a pub, an arts centre, a small cinema appropriately called ‘Small Cinema’ and a performance / rehearsal space for local bands. It is also a veritable museum to the community history. The revival involved extensive renovation as the old club had been left as nothing but a leaky external shell, but thanks to the passionate dedication of local writer and radio presenter Louis Beckett, the New Miners grew in true Phoenix fashion with much critical acclaim. Its success has coincided with the opening of a new football stadium, Manchester FC, a stone’s throw away, and many fans of the football go to the Miners after the games. It is exciting to see. The pub renovation is actually still ongoing, but I hope the Miners goes on to a very proud happy future. The sign shows a largely empty looking central room, with barrels in the corner and a central vat covering two floors. A man is been standing by it on the upper level. It looks more like a brewery scene than a mining scene though the emptiness captures a sense of the last days of the colliery when fewer and fewer staff were needed. Now, the social and artistic side of Moston is breathing new life into the area – a creative seam as rich as any coal shaft could ever produce. Arthur Chappell