The Class

Last updated: 21 March 2006

The parish has always called it the Class. Evening instruction began in the schoolroom — reading, drawing, and the elements of the work — after the stoppage of 1926, when the pumps had been kept running and the pit had continued. A training heading was driven at Bank Top for use when a county class could be assembled. Lamps and other apparatus were sent up from Newcastle to be tried in that heading. The brass of 1933 in the school porch records the arrangement and the beginning of the evenings.

Evening instruction. Benches, blackboard, and a section of pipe. The Institute, behind the school.

The schoolroom being required in the day, a timber hut was built behind the school. It is known as the Institute. The board reads County Mining Class (Plashetts), in lettering of the 1950s. Instruction is given on winter evenings. What the doorway shows is benches, a blackboard and a section of pipe. Visitors looking in from the lane are welcome to do so when the door is open; the evenings themselves are for those who have come to the Class.

Water in the Bank Top drift in the early 1930s fixed a local rule that no examination should be made without a deputy and a flame lamp. The rule still holds. The heading continues on a licensed basis and the Class still uses it. Booked parties, arranged at the Heritage Centre on mornings when the men are not in, may stand at the gated mouth. They do not go in. See Mining for the heading, and booked groups to write.

The Class supper is held at the Welfare Hall. A framed list of lodge secretaries hangs in that porch, with the indoor boards for the Gathering. Forestry, the pit and the stone have been the ordinary work of the place since the Commission took men on in 1946; the Class has remained the evening instruction of the parish.