Event - Group unveils heritage panel (Ecclesfield)

A CONSERVATION group is unveiling an information panel to celebrate its fourth birthday.

Ecclesfield Conservation Group, which was formed in 2008 to protect and conserve the character of the village, has had the panel installed at Ladycroft Meadow so people can learn more about what has shaped the area.

A free leaflet detailing the area’s heritage has also been produced.

Local historians Mel and Joan Jones have helped to write the information and funding has come from the East Peak Innovation Partnership. The unveiling takes place at 11am on Saturday.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/community/group-unveils-heritage-panel-1-4364161?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Event - Dancers to remember mine disaster victims (High Green, Sheffield)

A GROUP of folk dancers, singers and musicians are planning to mark the 150th anniversary of a pit explosion in Sheffield that claimed the lives of six miners.

They are aiming to hold commemorative events and unveil a brass plaque in memory of the victims of the tragedy at Westwood Colliery in High Green.

The sword dance team are called Six Jolly Miners, taking their name from a song based on the dangers facing all mining communities and the bravery of miners - a song that can still be heard in the Black Bull in Ecclesfield at Christmas.

The song has a special resonance as the 150th anniversary approaches of the disaster on April 4, 1862 when an underground explosion at Westwood Colliery killed six miners. An inquest at the Salutation Inn in High Green concluded that miners had been working with candles instead of safety lamps.

Planning has started for an event at High Green Primary School on April 23 which will feature an exhibition, poetry, art and a re-enactment. The next day it is intended to unveil a brass plaque, listing the victims of the disaster, and to stage music and dance in High Green Miners’ Welfare.

The group, formed two years ago, is working with a new local history group and research assistant Julie Powell has uncovered information about the lives of the six colliers and their families and is trying to find out if they have any descendants still living in the area.

Six Jolly Miners celebrate the region’s mining heritage and perform at various events. They recently helped to raise £500 for a project to restore Grenoside’s only listed building, the Reading Room.

They currently have five dancers from Sheffield and two from Newcastle and work with ceilidh team the B Team, led by John and Vic Bowden.

Members are planning to dance in Northumberland next month to commemorate another mining disaster 150 years ago. But it was the Barnsley area, with coal seams stretching into Sheffield, that was renowned as the most dangerous in the country.

“As a group of performers, the team has come to appreciate what a great debt we owe to our coal mining ancestors and how mining disasters wrecked the lives of thousands of South Yorkshire families and devastated entire communities,” said a member of the dance team, Joe Dunn.

Joe lives in Grenoside and has retired as headteacher of Southey Green Primary School, where he enthused pupils about folk dancing.

‘We’re miners in name only, but we are sword dancers and if our performances cause people to reflect a while, all well and good. We shouldn’t forget them.”

Six Jolly Miners practise on a Tuesday night at the Burton Street Foundation in Hillsborough and are looking for recruits to learn a “vigorous” sword dance. They have male and female members.

One of their recent ambitions was to name one of their techniques for the locking of swords after fellow sword dancer Mike Steel, who died of cancer in the summer at the age of 58. They perfected the move in time for his daughter Emma’s wedding last month.

Visit www.sixjollyminers.com or contact Joe Dunn on 2460463.

From: http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/dancers_to_remember_mine_disaster_victims_1_4052139

News - Ice hell secrets revealed at last (Ecclesfield)

THE full story of the lonely death of a Sheffield soldier in the frozen wastes of wartime Iceland is set to be revealed in a new TV documentary.

Arthur Rollinson, from Ecclesfield, was just 23 when he died of hypothermia after getting lost while on a routine mountain warfare exercise in January 1942.

He was known to be one of eight men from the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry who perished when they were caught in a blizzard.

By a tragic irony, safety was little more than half a mile away.

Now a complete account of the tragedy - and the heroism which led to 48 other men in their unit being miraculously rescued - is to be told in a two-part TV series which is being filmed by an Icelandic film crew.

They have just completed a visit to Sheffield to meet Arthur’s relatives, who two years ago paid an emotional pilgrimage to the remote cemetery where Arthur is buried.

Nephews Gerald and Ian Smart were amazed to discover that they only knew a small part of what happened on that fateful day nearly 70 years ago.

“We were astonished by what the film’s director Sturla Palsson told us - from being a tragic story it’s now also a heroic one,” Gerald said.

Sturla found that an everyday exercise became perilous when a fierce storm blew in and one of the officers in charge slipped and broke his leg - later dying of exposure.

“They were a group of 60 men but after the accident they dispersed and wandered in the dark without direction,” he said.

“Eight young men lost their lives, including Arthur, while four more managed to get to safety on their own.

“The rescue of the remaining 48 was nothing less than a miracle.

“It was by mere coincidence that people from a remote farm stumbled upon an exhausted soldier a short distance from their home. The farmers then spent the night looking for more survivors on the mountain side.

“The farmer’s wife looked after those who were brought to safety,” Sturla said.

“Two brothers bore the burden of carrying many of the unconscious men to safety.

“One was only 14, and he is still with us.”

Now Sturla and his team are searching for other survivors from that night, or for their relatives, most of whom are believed to have come from the Sheffield and South Yorkshire area.

“Arthur’s family are our only connection to a victim of this ordeal.

“We are still looking for survivors, their relatives or any other relatives of the dead,” he said.

Gerald, aged 67, said he believed the surviving brother deserved some kind of recognition for his heroism.

“What they did that night was incredible, to save so many of those men.

“When we went over there we knew absolutely nothing about it.”

Gerald said he and Ian now hoped to go to the film’s premiere in Iceland next year.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/local/ice_hell_secrets_revealed_at_last_1_4025429