Colliers and Christianity: Religion in the Coalmining
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Kidger, Margaret Eleanor (2012) Colliers and Christianity: religion in the coalmining communities of South Wales and the East Midlands c1860 to 1930s with a particular focus on the Rhondda Valleys in South Wales and the Hucknall and Shirebrook areas in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. 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For more information, please contact [email protected] COLLIERS AND CHRISTIANITY: RELIGION IN THE COALMINING COMMUNITIES OF SOUTH WALES AND THE EAST MIDLANDS c1860 TO 1930s WITH A PARTICULAR FOCUS ON THE RHONDDA VALLEYS IN SOUTH WALES AND THE HUCKNALL AND SHIREBROOK AREAS IN NOTTINGHAMSHIRE AND DERBYSHIRE MARGARET ELEANOR KIDGER, BA (Hons), MTh Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy JULY 2012 Wilford Parish Church, Nottingham Clifton Colliery in the background Undated photograph iii Abstract Many studies that have examined the issues of ‘secularisation’ and ‘religion and the working class’ have been based on large cities. This study, after first reviewing the debate on these issues, looks at institutional religion in coalmining communities in the East Midlands and South Wales from 1860 to the 1930s. It focuses particularly, though not exclusively, on Hucknall and Shirebrook in the East Midlands and the Rhondda Valleys in South Wales. The difficulties faced by the churches in providing for the needs of the rapidly growing mining communities are then outlined; the progress made by Nonconformity, Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism is examined and the contribution that the churches made to the lives of both church members and communities is assessed. The study also looks at the contribution of the miners themselves to institutional religion. The final chapter focuses on the inter-war years and assesses possible reasons for the widespread decline in religious commitment during that period and in so doing examines the extent to which the churches themselves may have inadvertently contributed to their own decline. Overall this study argues that institutional religion made a significant contribution, at least until 1914, to the life of the mining communities. It was mainly in the interwar period that, for a variety of reasons, secularisation in these working class communities increased. iv Acknowledgements I wish to thank my tutor Dr Frances Knight for her continual encouragement and support since the autumn of 2000 when I commenced a part-time MTh course in church history at the University of Wales in Lampeter. This course gave me the desire to continue with academic study. I am very grateful to Dr Knight for suggesting that I should seek to upgrade the MPhil thesis I was then researching to a PhD thesis. Needless to say her subsequent move to Nottingham has been very convenient for me! I am, however, also grateful to the academic staff at Lampeter, particularly for the residential courses they organised for part-time PhD students which were very helpful. I thank Lampeter too for its generosity in awarding me a grant sufficient to cover the fees for one academic year. Without the existence of Archives collections at Nottingham, Cardiff and Matlock, the Catholic Archives in Nottingham and the public libraries in the communities I have been researching, it would have been impossible to access the material I needed. I acknowledge particularly the staff at public libraries who have set up their microfilm readers to enable me to consult issues of local newspapers dating back to the relevant periods. My thanks also to the library staff at Regent’s Park College Oxford, the Congregationalist headquarters in Nottingham, the Wesley Centre at Oxford Brookes University and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth for enabling me to consult the handbooks/ yearbooks/ Conference reports of the v Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist and Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Churches for denominational statistical information. I am particularly grateful to the staff at the National Library of Wales; their knowledge of the Welsh language enabled me to make use of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist yearbooks written wholly in Welsh! The staff of the South Wales Miners’ Library at the University of Swansea were very helpful; I particularly valued the opportunity to study the transcripts of interviews of former miners. Also in Wales is the residential library of St Deiniol’s (now Gladstone’s Library) at Hawarden. This has provided me with a comfortable, peaceful environment in which to read, write and generally make progress with my work. My thanks also to the staff there and at the Hallward Library and the East Midlands Collection Library of the University of Nottingham for their help in locating and obtaining the necessary books and answering queries. The University has also provided excellent supporting facilities for PhD students, for which I am grateful. I have very much valued the cooperation I received from Rev Peter Gale, Vicar of Ystrad Rhondda. He not only let me borrow relevant minute books of St Stephen’s Church and St Cynon’s Church but also showed me the permanent damage that mining subsidence had caused at St Stephen’s, and he took my husband and myself for a tour of the upper Rhondda. Father David O’Donnell, parish priest of the Catholic Church in Tonypandy, also kindly gave me access to archival material held in his parish. vi I have appreciated the interest in my study and the encouragement I have received from fellow PhD student Margaret Turnham and from members of Wilford Parish Church, Nottingham, which I attend. I am grateful for the sum of £200 which I received from Wilford Church a few years ago to help with my research costs. I thank Wilford churchwardens Eddie Mason and Simon Massarella for allowing me to use an old photograph in the Church archives as my frontispiece and for providing the digital version and inputting it into my work. I also thank Roger Periam for constructing graphs from the data I provided, Laura Jarvis and Simon Massarella for their skill in adjusting these graphs to fit into my work and Simon Massarella for his help with printing. My greatest thanks are due to my husband Michael for his unfailing encouragement, support and very practical help in proof reading, constructive criticism, inputting all my statistical tables, and accompanying me on my visits to so many places in search of relevant material. Without his support this study could not have been completed. vii Abbreviations DRO Derbyshire Record Office GRO Glamorgan Record Office ILP Independent Labour Party NA Nottinghamshire Archives NLW National Library of Wales NMA Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association NMIU Nottinghamshire Miners’ Industrial Union NUM National Union of Mineworkers RC Roman Catholic SWMF South Wales Miners’ Federation SWMIU South Wales Miners’ Industrial Union SWML South Wales Miners’ Library viii Table of Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv Abbreviations vii Table of Contents viii List of Graphs ix List of Tables x List of Illustrations xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Key Issues Debated: A Literature Survey 8 Chapter 2 Coal Mining: Industry, Communities and the Challenges for the Churches 60 Chapter 3 The Strength of Nonconformity in the Two Coalfields Prior to 1914 100 Chapter 4 The Anglican Church in the Mining Communities 164 Chapter 5 The Roman Catholic Church 210 Chapter 6 1914 – 1918: The Watershed Years? 234 Chapter 7 The Inter-War Years and the Problems of Decline 259 Conclusion 326 Appendix Statistical Details for Individual Churches in the Rhondda 337 Bibliography 377 Total wordcount 95,221 (includes footnotes, appendix and bibliography) ix List of Graphs 3:1 Baptist Church Membership – Rhondda 1901 – 1937 125 3:2 Congregationalist Membership – Rhondda 1901 – 1937 126 3:3 Calvinistic Methodist Membership – Rhondda 1901 – 1937 127 3:4 Baptist Membership Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire 139 3:5 Congregationalist Membership Derbyshire and Notts 140 4:1 – 4: 9 Pie charts showing proportion of denominational membership in Rhondda parishes 1906 171 – 172 5:1 Roman Catholic Membership in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire 1921 – 1937 225 6:1 First World