A chance message from fifteen-year-old Eddie Ravensdale, to Radstock Museum last week, has led to a miner’s token being returned to its home town – all the way from Australia. Eddie asked if the Museum, which is currently closed for the winter, would host a special visit from cousins on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the UK, who brought with them a surprise!

Eddie’s message read: “I ask that you help my distant family with a once in a lifetime opportunity. For the first time in 34 years, for this one week, my cousins, who I have never met before, are visiting from Australia, and we may never see them again.

“My cousin’s grandfather worked in a mine and we have found the token number 12. Hoping you will allow us to visit this week, so we can donate the token to keep it safe for our family’s sake before they go back to Australia on Thursday.”

Eddie’s family had no idea that he had contacted the museum, so it was a wonderful surprise for them to find themselves being welcomed there.

Although the building was busy with volunteers carrying out the annual deep clean and maintenance work, Eddie and his Australian relatives enjoyed a guided tour and discovered what life had been like for their forebears who mined in Radstock.

It was also a wonderful surprise for museum volunteer, Anny Northcote, Head of Research, who realised at once that the token they brought with them, was one missing from the Kilmersdon Colliery tally board which is on display in the museum.

Every miner had a token, which was a numbered metal disc unique to a particular miner. At Kilmersdon Colliery, miners would

remove their token from the tally board when they arrived for their shift and take it with them into the mine. After their shift, they returned the token to the tally board.

For the mine management, this was a visual display as to who was down in the mine at any one time. Although these were the days before much was done in the way of health and safety, if there was an accident underground and the mine was evacuated, the tally board would tell the manager if any miners remained underground and exactly who they were; they might have been trapped or worse still, injured or dead, and a search and rescue party would be sent to find them once conditions were safe enough to do so.

Walter Henry Holder, 1909–1995, was miner number 12 at Kilmersdon

Colliery, Haydon, until the mine closed in 1973. Walter’s last job there was as a lamp checker; he would collect all the miners’ lamps at the end of their shifts and check they were in good working order before their next use. Walter had mined in other local coal mines before Kilmersdon.

When Walter passed away, his token went to his daughter, Pamela Ruddock, (formerly Pamela Holder). Pamela felt that the token should be with a member of the family who still bore the surname Holder, and so gave it to her nephew, Clive Holder, but Clive, who now lives in Australia, decided that he would like Radstock Museum to have the token for safekeeping.

Clive and his family have been staying in Radstock with their aunt, Pamela, for a few days as their last stop before returning to Australia following a tour around the UK on a once in a lifetime trip.

Clive was delighted to be able to visit the museum to find out what life might have been like for his grandfather, Walter Holder. He was able to visit the museum’s reconstruction of a coal mine and see some of the tools used, as well as one of the cages which would have lowered miners into the pit. Clive is really pleased that his grandfather’s token will now go on display at the museum.

The museum is delighted to have the token and to learn about the miner, Walter Henry Holder, who owned it and to meet the lovely family who came after him. Token number 12 will be on display on the very hook it had hung on all those years ago on the Kilmersdon Colliery tally board when the museum re-opens on Saturday, 1st February.

Story with thanks to Lucy Tudor and former miner from Kilmersdon, Selwyn Rees.