EN: 0783.17 'Unity is Strength' - the Micklefield Branch banner of the Yorkshire Miners Association


Badges from the collection of union, gala and strike badges


YKSMM: 2001.6 A creamware jug inscribed to East & Little Benton Colliery

The Museum's social history collection contains material about the personal lives of miners and their families. It covers miners’ communities, leisure time, personal items and home life, as well as the human-resource aspects of the industry, such as trade unions, pit management, health and safety and disasters.

All items have a strong link to the mining industry, often with interesting stories attached. The collection is particularly strong in the areas of commemorative material, management and training ephemera, rescue and medical equipment. The Museum also has a rare collection of pit-brow-lass clothing worn in Wigan in the 1960s and is home to a collection of union banners, currently on loan from the National Union of Mineworkers (Yorkshire Area). The Museum is actively looking to collect items that relate to canteens, leisure activities and items from outside the Yorkshire area.

Alongside this sits the handling collection. This is an important resource that allows the public to experience social history at first hand. The handling collection has three strands: loans boxes for schools; reminiscence boxes for older generations; and duplicate mining material for local community groups.

It is not a requirement for the items in the handling collection to have a mining provenance, as it is recognised that many of the items required are general social history objects. However, preference is given to mining objects where possible. The principal audiences for the handling collection are the local communities.