16 FT. x 14 FT. x 12 FT. Three figure group in cast iron at one and a half life size. Commissioned by ST. HELENS council. to commemorate four hundred and fifty years of mining in St Helens to be sited on new traffic island in the centre of the town.

 

I chose a mining family for this work to be sited in the centre of St Helens, a mining

town to the core.

The sculpture covers 360°, radiating out from the roundabout it sits on.

The masters where carved in elm then cast into iron a material closely linked to the town with the coal being used to melt the iron for casting in it's  many foundries

The three figures a collier picking coal, a young lad breaking coal and a pit brow lass, back onto the central column of coal. They highlight the inclusion of the whole community in the mining industry and so thr total devastation when it ended.

The last Lancashire pit closed as I was carving this piece and the last iron foundry, Varleys, shut down just before I had the figures cast.