Sunday Stone: an enduring metaphor of mining diseases and underground mining conditions

Abstract

Abstract The occupational hazards of miners include acute trauma and death from rock falls, water inundation, explosions and the long-term effects of progressive pulmonary disease. One of the most evocative of records of the dust-laden atmosphere in which coalminers work is Sunday Stone. Specimens of Sunday Stone are preserved in the Great North Museum, the ‘Hancock’, managed by Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Sunday Stone is the name given to calcareous deposits that formed inside wooden pipes carrying wastewater from the collieries of Durham and Northumberland. Sunday Stone is composed of alternating light and dark bands, each double-band representing one 24-hour period. Water seeping into the working mines became laden with coal dust and dissolved mineral salts. The daily dark band corresponded to the working day (the ‘fore’ and ‘back’ shifts) with its heavy dust-laden atmosphere. The broader light-coloured band was laid down on Sundays during coalface downtime. Sunday Stone today comprises an enduring metaphor of the mining industry, and specimens remain as a silent but permanent witness to the conditions in which millions of underground coalminers have worked and often work today. In these banded patterns one sees the progressive struggle to improve mine safety and ventilation and the evolution of industrial preventive medicine.