BLACK DIAMONDS
On what was once National Coal Board land,
at the edge of the former pit village
are car show rooms and a builders’ merchant –
like the outskirts of a provincial town
except for the slag heap, bull-dozed on top
and planted with birches, that looms above
the preserved pit head. Beyond the village
is pasture, and then a walled estate
with a modest late Georgian mansion,
open daily to the paying public,
set back above a shallow valley.
At the edge of this pastoral landscape,
a November sun, low in a misty sky,
turns the slag heap into a tumulus
and the winding gear into a prayer wheel –
a revolution’s relics. Through the vale
a brook, ice age vestige, meanders.
In its bed of pale silty clay, beneath
autumn leaves, are coal shards.
Ian Craine
March 27, 2026Lovely poem. Winding gear becomes a prayer wheel. Wonderful
John Plummer
March 29, 2026Forgive some nostalgic indulgence spun from your ‘Black Diamonds’. I spent my sixth form years in South Wales and frequently toured the tortured valleys for sports fixtures or adventure, usually by minibus. Coal was still mined in massive quantities but many places were losing their livelihoods by then. The legendary strength of the communities withstood the grinding poverty, and the relentless threats above and below ground. Song, chapel and rugby generated deep, exclusive pride. Somehow I found a lovely (but troubled) girlfriend from near Caerphilly. Once we travelled by train north to Caerphilly to find how her homeland felt. But she was so terrified of her father having to meet a callow English boy, from the enemy nation where he burnt coal but never dug it. Aberfan was allowed to happen by the captains of Coal just after I had returned home. The landscapes now smother the tragedies but the sadness lingers.
Drew Steele
April 5, 2026I liked the poem – and the apparent reference to Catherine Bailey’s book of the same title and to the bo Wentworth Woodhouse mansion itself: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/23/rachel-cooke-shelf-life-wentworth-woodhouse-catherine-bailey-black-diamond-fitzilliam-family-coal. It’s a lovely thing to look at and now you can get a tour of the inside. When I was a runner, our club used to occasionally do the estate.
David Selzer
April 6, 2026The poem is about the village of Rhostyllen and the nearby NT property of Erddig both in Wrexham, North Wales. Fascinating that what it describes could be found in a number of different places in the ex coal fields of Britain. Here’s another poem about Erddig and Berhsam colliery in Rhostyllen: https://davidselzer.com/2020/02/pastorale/.
Jeff Teasdale
April 10, 2026Under one’s feet, David, coal offers a broad spectrum of social history. The Duke of Bridgewater is said to have been able to see his wealth accrue on the canal bearing his name and passing beneath his house (now the site of the splendid RHS Bridgwater gardens in Salford) in two directions – his coal carried on barges going one way and the bags of money it was sold for coming back up the other.
For myself, a much less grand site is enjoyed regularly on a footpath from Birchencliff near the delightfully-named village of Pott Shrigley, over Bakestonedale Moor, and one of my annual ‘footpath inspections’ for Cheshire East through ‘The Ramblers’… this now a voluntary occupation making sure our footpaths are kept both open, and in good order. On the south face of the moor is much industrial history, long since gone, but there to find if one cares to look down; a small piece of coal is often to be seen protruding from the path. This then explains several mysterious concrete slabs lost amongst the sedge grass: and bracken: capped mine shafts, the highest of which has been turned into a fascinating interpretation, a model showing a vertical shaft, pulleys and ropes, and several tiny figures working with pick, shovel and bucket in a bell-chamber deep underground, this where this horizontal seam cuts back into the hill from the black fragments to be found on the aforementioned path. This coal fed ‘the brickworks’ on Bakestondale Road, owned by the Hammond family, and now a small linear industrial estate housing small businesses such as a sculptor, and the excellent Kickback Coffee Company. In deference to the miners of days long gone, I stop here by these shafts for my lunch and dream, dig out a small lump of the coal from my path, inhale the drifting aroma of roasting coffee if the wind is right and then follow it down to the small cafe.frequented by cyclists on their long climb up to Kettleshulme (just as I once pounded up it as a teenager 60 years ago).
The pocketed coal is taken home to be incorporated into yet another small sculpture, a tiny fragment-token of a huge-skied former industrial landscape now greened over and supporting only sheep, but redolent with memory.
Thank you for your poem, David. As ever, it has set the hare of other memories running in my head…