Fred at the Pithead baths
Parkinson's Yard
Our future plans involve the reconstruction of a Victorian miner's cottage that used to stand on the Museum site. Archaeologists recently uncovered the foundations of the cottage foundations and we also have a photograph of the cottage when it was still in existence, allowing us to understand its layout. We know a little about the family that lived there in the mid-nineteenth century from the census returns.
The cottage was a traditional West Yorkshire single-storey miner's cottage, similar to those investigated locally in the 1842 Report on the employment of women and children in mines. Our plans involve rebuilding and furnishing the cottage as it would have been in Victorian times. The homely interior and cottage garden will offer an appreciation into the difficult and crowded conditions for a Victorian mining family at the time.