Easington Colliery Disaster Memorial (including memorial screens, communal grave areas, raised beds and former colliery equipment)

Easington Colliery Disaster Memorial of 1953-4.

The memorial comprises two memorial screens, located at the E and W boundaries of the garden of remembrance. The larger E screen is 0.82m high and 1.05m long and consists of two ashlar plaques within a coursed rubble surround. The horizontal plaque bears a life sized bas-relief of a miner in profile, wearing his working dress including helmet and head lamp, and carrying a Davy lamp. The name of the sculptor is not recorded. An adjacent plaque bears the inscription ‘REMEMBER BEFORE GOD THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR / LIVES IN THE EASINGTON COLLIERY DISASTER IN / MAY NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE TO WHOM / THIS GARDEN OF REMEMBRANCE IS DEDICATED’. At the base is a cross mounted on a piece of coal. The screen is flanked by two coal trucks set on short lengths of track.

The smaller W screen comprises a rectangular plaque with flanking bas-reliefs of Davy lamps and coursed rubble panels, the whole set within an ashlar frame. On the plaque is incised in Roman capitals 'THIS TABLET IS ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF / EIGHTY THREE MEN WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE / EASINGTON COLLIERY DISASTER / TWENTY NINTH MAY NINETEEN HUNDRED & FIFTY ONE / SEVENTY TWO GRAVES ARE IN THIS CEMETERY / THE FOLLOWING NINE MEN ARE BURIED ELSEWHERE / FREDERICK CARR · RICHARD CHAMPLEY · JOSEPH GODSMAN / ERNEST GOYNS · HERBERT GOYNS · JOHN HARKER / JOHN WM HENDERSON · STANLEY PEACEFUL · STEPHEN WILSON / ALSO TO THE MEMORY OF TWO BRAVE MEN / JOHN YOUNG WALLACE AND HENRY BURDESS / WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN PERFORMANCE OF DUTIES / AS RESCUE WORKERS AND WHO ARE BURIED ELSEWHERE’.

The garden of remembrance is a rectangular, E–W oriented enclosure defined by a low beech hedge. It is located on the main N–S axis of the cemetery, immediately N of the Easington Colliery War Memorial. To the E are two rectangular areas of lawns and a raised bed with rounded ends. The latter features a coal cutting machine, painted red and mounted on short lengths of track. At the centre of the Garden are four raised flower beds of squared and coursed rubble. Rising from the S-W bed is a cross formed from four miners’ picks.

To the W are the two rectangular areas of communal graves, divided by stone borders into a total of 72 individual grave spaces. They are marked with raked stone tablets which record the name and age of death in Roman capitals.