Betteshanger Colliery Remembered.

Subscribe to my you tube channel for 280+ more coal mine tributes and counting. Betteshanger colliery was located to the northwest of Deal,Kent and was served by a branch off the Minster to Dover line. The colliery opened in 1924, and the first coal was raised in 1927. In 1945, the colliery had a workforce of 2,033, with 1,594 employees working sub-surface and 439 above ground.
Little remains of the colliery and most of the buildings have long been demolished. Shafts have been sealed up and fenced off.
The colliery is now a country park and a wildlife centre with reservoirs and reed beds hosting a variety of bird life. Coal spoil was present and grassed over and several hills and mounds were testament to their former use.
Betteshanger miners initially lived in Deal itself but reports are that the genteel folk of the town didn’t take readily to the unwashed miners. And the miners were unwashed since bathing facilities were not originally available on site. ‘No Miners’ signs were placed in boarding house windows in the town.
As a result, in 1929, isolated farmland on the outskirts of Deal, at Mill Hill was acquired to build 950 houses plus social and sport facilities. Nowadays the miners have now gone, but perhaps they had the last laugh after all, since the houses built to keep them out of the Deal have now been incorporated into the town’s boundaries.
By all accounts, Betteshanger was the biggest and most militant of all the Kent coalfields. Betteshanger was infamous for the 1942 Betteshanger miners’ strike, which was the only such action during World War II. This strike raised much public contempt despite justification.
Betteshanger was the last pit to return to work after the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike, and it eventually closed on 26 August 1989. This made the Bettershanger colliery to be the last one in Kent to close.