Pick Axe

Unknown from a local bric-a-brac sale. Purpose: is this from a local industry? (railway, quarry?), was it common to adapt tools in this way?

Loaned to Smart Gallery  Douglas Grant

Bob and Ann Clark were able to shed some light on the tool for us! Bob was a coal miner and used to use one of these. Here’s what he told us:

“It’s a coal miner’s rage which the colliery blacksmith used to adapt from a coal miner’s pick. The tool was used in a similar fashion to an axe so that wooden pit props could be chopped at the bottom, hammered out of their position and then be reused on the coal face that was not as high as the previous one. They were last used at the Huncoat colliery, c. 1965.”

The photograph below was bought in a local sale. Not much is known about it…