Arthur Appleyard
Batley
Served: 1944 - 1948; South Kirby and Temple Newsome
Arthur Appleyard is 82 years old and has been happily married to his wife Mavis for 58 years. They live in Soothill Lane, Batley. They have a grown-up family of five as well as grandchildren. When Arthur left school he took up an apprenticeship in Engineering in Leeds. He studied regularly at night school to improve his qualifications.
At his interview prior to going into the forces he was told that he would be assigned to the Fleet Air Arm or he would be an Engineering Artificer in the Royal Navy. Fate was about to play a trick which would directly affect his future life. Dreaming about servicing fighter planes on an aircraft carrier, he tore open his call up papers to find he had to report to the Prince of Wales Colliery, Pontefract, for six weeks training as a Bevin Boy. His approach to life ensured that he piled into this job as enthusiastically as he approached any job he had to do.
He lived in a hostel in nearby Cutsyke with other Bevin Boys many of them far from home. Every day for six weeks they had four hours down the pit and four hours in the classroom. Somehow they fitted in an hour in the gym with an army physical training instructor. His training finished he was posted to South Kirby Colliery, a small village near Barnsley. He spent six weeks on the surface and then went “down t’ pit.” The same energy he displays today stood him in good stead with the local miners. He had to take his share of the banter from the ‘real’ miners, but he earned their respect and became an invaluable member of the team. He was often asked to attend Barnsley College one day a week, but he always refused, determined to return to his engineering career. During 1945 he asked for more money and was told the only way he could do that was “getting coal.” So off he went to the coalface swinging a pick he had to buy himself. Naturally, he made a good job of it.
In 1945 the war ended but many Bevin Boys had to continue to work in the mines for, in some cases, years. Arthur was ‘demobbed’ well into 1948. It was about this time that he met Mavis, and they were married in 1950 at St John’s Church, Lower Wortley. He continued progressing in engineering and was promoted to management in a Batley firm, from which he retired.
Towards the end of his stint as a miner he met the Miners' President, Joe Hall, who asked him to stay on and go to college. He politely refused. Afterwards he wondered, occasionally, what the course of their lives would have been if the Bevin Boy had decided to become mining engineer. He is rightly proud of what he did.
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