Tom Lamb (artist)

Last updated

Tom Lamb
Born
Thomas Coutts Lamb

(1928-05-03)3 May 1928
Pelton, County Durham, England
Died24 February 2016(2016-02-24) (aged 87)
Durham, England
NationalityBritish
Known forCoal mining
Painting
Spouse(s)
Margaret
​
(m. 1972)​

Thomas Coutts Lamb (3 May 1928 – 24 February 2016) was a British coal miner and artist in the North East of England.

Contents

Tom Lamb was one of many young coal miners, at the age of 14 he started working in Busty Pit at Craghead Colliery near Stanley, County Durham. [1] Lamb did not realise his artistic talent until he was hospitalised with diphtheria at a young age, from then on Lamb brought sketch books underground with him. Here he was able to capture the atmosphere of the coal mine, depicting his and many others every day working environment.

Early life and family

Tom Lamb was born to William Lamb, born 1899, and Jennie Coutts, born 1904, along with his older brother call John, born 1924. Tom’s dad and brother were also miners and they all lived in one of the houses on Black Horse terrace. Although the signs of mining could be seen around the family home, this area was in the middle of the countryside. Here Lamb would play with his older brother and friends as well as practice drawing the landscape and activity he experienced around him.

Tom lamb as a child had been hospitalised with diphtheria, whilst he recovered from this illness he discovered his ability to draw.

"My mam brought me in a sketching pad and I would draw the doctors and nurses. That got me hooked on art. It was all I was any good at." [2]

Tom went to school until he turned 14 years old, here his teacher noticed we had a great talent for art. After this he went to work in the Busty Pit in Craghead Colliery near Stanley in Co. Durham.

Coal mining 1942 - 1969

At the age of fourteen Lamb left school and started work in the mining trade.‘In 1942 there were over 130 pits in the County of Durham employing about 120,000 men and boys’. [3] Lamb's first job was above ground as he was too young to start working underground, and he was an assistant attendant in the pit head baths from 1942 to 1946. He would have to hose down the shower cubicles, keep the locker rooms clean and look after the boilers.

In the summer of 1946 Lamb turned eighteen, the age that pit boys started to work underground. Before he could go underground he had three weeks training at the Morrison Busty Colliery in Annfield Plain as well as being given the equipment he would later need to use. Lamb then started work at the Busty Pit at Craghead Colliery, his 'first job was on the landing as a datal hand and was to send sets of four full tubs outbye (to the shaft bottom) on the haulage rope and then to make sure the putters had plenty of chumins (empty tubs) that came back on the haulage rope' [4]

In 1948 Lamb's job was hand-putting until 1950 although for Lamb this work was too physically demanding he would scrape his spine on the low roofs which would never heal properly. After these two years of working in these poor conditions Lamb asked to be transferred back to datal work; here he worked until the pit closed in 1969 and he was made redundant.

Artwork

Lamb documented his entire career underground through taking his sketch books to work with him every day. He was able to capture the true emotion and daily tasks that miners experienced on the day to day. Lamb’s sketches and paintings shows a realism to mining that some other artists are not able to capture. Lamb used his brother frequently as a model when working underground as he was able to ask John to hold certain positions. He would start by taking quick sketches of the scenes that were taking place underground as well as making notes and comments about each sketch he produced.

“There is life and movement in Tom’s work and yet he is able to suggest stillness and tranquillity in this enclosed, private and masculine world...We should all be very grateful to Tom for sharing a vision of a now vanished world in this important and timely exhibition" - Dr Dyson [5]

It was in his later years that Lamb began to turn his sketches into the artwork one can see today in exhibitions.

Some of Lamb's artwork is still available to view at the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, Newcastle.

Personal life

Lamb married his wife Margaret in December 1972. 'They travelled widely, something Tom had never been able to do when a miner', [6] they visited Italy, Germany, Switzerland and France. In 1984 Lamb and his wife moved 'to York Crescent, Newton Hall' [7]

Notable exhibitions

Exhibitions include: [8]

Notable works

Related Research Articles

Annfield Plain Human settlement in England

Annfield Plain is a village in County Durham, in England. It is situated on a plateau between the towns of Stanley, 4 km (2.5 mi) to the north-east, and Consett, 8 km (5.0 mi) to the west. According to the 2001 census, Annfield Plain has a population of 3,569. By the time of the 2011 Census Annfield Plain had become a ward of Stanley parish. The ward had a population of 7,774. Along with much of the surrounding area, Annfield Plain's history lies in coal mining. While the industry collapsed in the 1980s and 90s, its effects are still apparent both in the landscape and in folk memory.

Stanley, County Durham Human settlement in England

Stanley is a former colliery town and civil parish in County Durham, England. Centred on a hilltop between Chester-le-Street and Consett, the town lies south west of Gateshead.

Sacriston Human settlement in England

Sacriston is a village and civil parish in County Durham, England, situated 3 miles (4.8 km) north of the city of Durham.

Brandon, County Durham Human settlement in England

Brandon is a village in County Durham, England. It is situated a short distance to the southwest of Durham. Brandon was originally one of the seven townships within the ancient parish of Brancepeth. It grew from a sparsely populated agricultural area into a populous mining district after the establishment of collieries and later coke and fireclay works. Until the 19th century Brandon village, formerly known as East Brandon, was one of the larger settlements in Brancepeth Parish.

National Coal Mining Museum for England

The National Coal Mining Museum for England is based at the site of Caphouse Colliery in Overton, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It opened in 1988 as the Yorkshire Mining Museum and was granted national status in 1995.

Pit pony

A pit pony, otherwise known as a mining horse, was a horse, pony or mule commonly used underground in mines from the mid-18th until the mid-20th century. The term "pony" was sometimes broadly applied to any equine working underground.

Hartley Colliery disaster 1862 mining disaster in England

The Hartley Colliery disaster was a coal mining accident in Northumberland, England, that occurred on 16 January 1862 and resulted in the deaths of 204 men and children. The beam of the pit's pumping engine broke and fell down the shaft, trapping the men below. The disaster prompted a change in British law that required all collieries to have at least two independent means of escape.

Matthias Dunn, was a mining engineer in northeast England and one of the first government inspectors of mines. He was known for encouraging safe practices in mines.

David John Douglass, sometimes known as Dave or "Danny the Red", is a political activist in Tyneside and Yorkshire. He is a member of the IWW, the NUM and Class War, and was formerly in the Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) and the Socialist Union (Internationalist), of which he was a leading member. He is a regular contributor to the Weekly Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He has also written Pit Talk in County Durham (1973), a book about the dialect Pitmatic.

West Stanley Pit disaster

The West Stanley colliery was a coal mine near Stanley. The mine opened in 1832 and was closed in 1936. Over the years several seams were worked through four shafts: Kettledrum pit, Lamp pit, Mary pit and New pit. In 1882 an underground explosion killed 13 men and in 1909 another explosion killed 168 men.

Nicholas Wood

Nicholas Wood FGS FRS was an English colliery and steam locomotive engineer. He helped engineer and design many steps forward in both engineering and mining safety, and helped bring about the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, holding the position of President from its inauguration to his death.

Sheriff Hill Colliery or Ellison Main Colliery was a coal mine at Gateshead Fell in County Durham, England. The colliery had two shafts and provided employment to the residents of Sheriff Hill, after it opened in 1793. There were many major accidents resulting in the deaths of workers at the colliery. There was a protracted strike at the colliery in 1834. The colliery closed in 1926.

North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers

The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (NEIMME), commonly known as The Mining Institute, is a British Royal Chartered learned society and membership organisation dedicated to advancing science and technology in the North and promoting the research and preservation of knowledge relating to mining and mechanical engineering. The membership of the Institute is elected on the basis of their academic and professional achievements with Members and Fellows entitled to the postnominal MNEIMME and FNEIMME. The Institutes’ membership is predominately from local industry and from academics at Durham and Newcastle Universities, though members are also located further afield across the UK.

Oliver Percival Kilbourn was a British coal miner, painter, and founding member of the Ashington Group.

Edward Fenwick Boyd British engineer

Edward Fenwick Boyd was an English industrialist who became the fourth President of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (NEIMME). He held a leading role in the Mining Institute from its inauguration in 1852 as Treasurer and a member of the council before becoming the fourth president in 1869. As president, Boyd oversaw the installation of the Nicholas Wood Memorial Hall and the Newcastle College of Physical Science.

This is a partial glossary of coal mining terminology commonly used in the coalfields of the United Kingdom. Some words were in use throughout the coalfields, some are historic and some are local to the different British coalfields.

Norman Cornish British artist (1919–2014)

Norman Stansfield Cornish was an English mining artist.

Addison Langhorne Steavenson was an English Mining Engineer. He became President of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (NEIMME) in 1893 after being a member of the Institute for thirty-eight years. Steavenson was married to Anna Maria; they had three daughters named Anna, Frances and Hilda and one son called Addison Langhorne Junior who died young.

A colliery viewer or coal viewer was the manager of a coal mine or colliery. The term was mostly used in the late eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, in the UK. In modern use, the viewer would be the senior and responsible mining engineer at a site.

Bentley Colliery Former coal mine in South Yorkshire, England

Bentley Colliery was a coal mine in Bentley, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, England, that operated between 1906 and 1993. In common with many other mines, it suffered a disaster in 1931 when 45 miners were killed after a gas explosion. The site of the mine has been converted into a woodland.

References

  1. ↑ Norton, Peter. J., Tom Lamb The Biography of a Mining Artist,The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (2014), p. 7.
  2. ↑ The Journal, Exhibition for Durham "Pitman Painter" Tom Lamb, North East News, accessed 11 January 2017
  3. ↑ Norton, Peter. J., Tom Lamb The Biography of a Mining Artist, The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, (2014), p. 20.
  4. ↑ Norton, Peter. J., Tom Lamb The Biography of a Mining Artist, The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, (2014), p. 29.
  5. ↑ The Journal, Exhibition for Durham "Pitman Painter" Tom Lamb, North East News, accessed 11 January 2017
  6. ↑ Norton, Peter. J., Tom Lamb The Biography of a Mining Artist, The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, (2014), p. 64.
  7. ↑ Norton, Peter. J., Tom Lamb The Biography of a Mining Artist, The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, (2014), p. 64.
  8. ↑ Dyson, Henry, Tom Lamb, Henry Dyson Fine Art Ltd, accessed 2 December 2016
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.