Leeds nostalgia: Pit with five mile underground trek to coal face finally runs out of road in January 1981...
Peckfield Colliery outside Micklefield, to the east of Leeds, closed down after more than 100 years.
By early January, most of the pit’s 560 workers had been transferred to other pits, leaving just the machinery underground, looked after by a skeleton crew but they were due to go by February.
The pit was sunk in 1872 and had its share of tragedies. On April 30, 1896, 63 pitmen died in an underground explosion. They left 132 widows, children and other dependants. As a result, the Micklefield Colliery Disaster Fund was set up and was still going in 1957, when there were still three surviving dependants if the 1896 disaster, aged 83, 72 and 67.
The fund was would up on December 12, 1962. It was closed because it was losing money, its underground roadway leading to the pit face stretching some five miles in length.