The Last Women of the Durham Coalfield: Hannah's Granddaughter

by Margaret Hedley

Overview

'As this book shows, the women of the Durham coalfield played an equal role in shaping daily life and trajectories of history in the region, just as women today are building their own futures in communities around the world.' - Hillary Rodham Clinton

The final book in a series charting the true family history of a Durham coal-mining family, which started in the 1830s

The Second World War took its toll on all sections of society. The appeal for women to work outside of the home in the many ammunition factories to support the war effort was taken up by many women from the colliery villages. They worked for eight hours at the factory, taking up their care-giving roles and all that involved, when they returned  home.  Their days continued to be long and strenuous.

After the war the government introduced a series of initiatives intended to improve the lives of the nation. A reformed education system was introduced in 1944, nationalization in 1947 and a national health service in 1948.  At last things were looking up for coal-mining families.

With this bright new horizon, little did the women in Hannah’s family realize that they would represent the last generation of  women of the Durham Coalfield.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781803994192
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	03/07/2024
Series:	Women of the Durham Coalfield , #3
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Margaret has an MA in History and taught at secondary school. She is now a family history researcher in East Durham. Margaret is passionate about Duram's coal-mining history, and much of her research is related to this. She is the author of the first two volumes of Women of the Durham Coalfield, published by The History Press.

Read an Excerpt

Foreword
I grew up hearing stories from my family members who emigrated to the United States from a County Durham mining community in the nineteenth century. My paternal grandfather, Hugh Simpson Rodham, came from England as a child with his parents and siblings to Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the 1880s. My grandmother, Hannah Jones Rodham – who went to work very young in a silk mill in Scranton, where she met Hugh – often talked about her great-grandparents who came from the small coal mining villages of southern Wales. That’s what drew me to Margaret Hedley’s remarkable trilogy of books about the women of the Durham coalfields.
   Histories can be epic tales of wars, empires, economic forces, presidents, and kings. But I find myself most drawn to stories that illustrate the lives of ordinary people who, in their own small ways, shaped our world.
   As I was reading about Margaret’s great-great-grandmother Hannah Hall, I began to picture my great-great-grandmother in Hannah’s place. She lived in the north of Durham while Hannah lived in the east, but I was able to imagine the type of life she and her family had lived based on Hannah’s story. The circumstances of their lives would have been similar, and they would have both faced the difficult decision of staying in the only home you’d ever known or sailing into an unknown future for a chance at a better life.
   Through Margaret’s family saga between 1820 and 1968 – an era when life was lived around coal – we meet ordinary people caring for their families, making hard choices, and searching for meaning. The women married to coal miners were caregivers who waited at home, not with empty hands but with a relentless list of household tasks to carry out. They worried about whether their husbands would come home or if they’d join the list of miners killed in the dangerous mines. If that happened, they knew they would lose their family’s only source of income and the roof over their heads.
   In her latest book, The Last Women of the Durham Coalfield, Margaret brings her family’s journey into the present with her own story. As the title suggests – and as Margaret witnessed at the age of 15 – the coal mines on which her family and their village relied closed forever. The impacts on the surrounding community were enormous. Her story shows not just how economies and industries changed, but how those changes affected the way people lived.
   That’s why Margaret’s meticulous research and vivid prose is so critical. So often, books about Durham County tell us about the husbands, fathers, and sons who worked in the dangerous and dirty coalfields. But through their actions, daily tasks, and choices, the women at home formed the warp and weft of history. From Industrial Age hardship to post-war affluence to the women’s movement, the world went through monumental changes during Margaret’s family’s lifetimes, and they met the changes with resilience and resourcefulness.
   There was progress on so many fronts, and much of that progress would have been impossible without the women we meet in Margaret’s books. They didn’t live their lives expecting that their stories would be included in future books, but their stories are essential. Without them, our understanding of the past is impoverished, our history only half complete.
   I hope that Margaret’s books will inspire more historians to document the daily lives not just of men, who have been traditionally centred in historical narratives, but of the women living quieter but just as important lives alongside them. As this book shows, the women of the Durham coalfield played an equal role in shaping daily life and trajectories of history in the region, just as women today are building their own futures in communities around the world.
 
Hillary Rodham Clinton