Lamp House

Lamp House

Following the end of the first world war the existing lamp house was deemed too small because of the increase in manpower and the recent introduction of heavy hand held electric lamps which were being used in addition to the normal lamps. The building was completed in 1922. It is a dramatic building with it's soaring roofs and unlike any other building on site. Together with the Pithead Baths it was the most heavily used building on site and is largely unchanged.
Colliery Lamphouse, now part of a site museum of the Coal Mining industry .1922, with minor alterations in 1979 upon conversion to museum reception area. Brick with coped gables to asymmetrically-pitched roofs to 4 linked parallel ranges the north facing steeper pitches fully glazed. Later single storey lean to's cover lower parts of side walls. Front elevation (north) of 5 bays, with five 4-light windows within recessed brick panel. Part of the lamp charging equipment has been retained in the altered interior. The building is of special interest as a large-scale lamphouse built to serve a colliery workforce of almost 4000 men.
List entry Description
Summary of Building
Colliery lamp house (9) of 1920-22, with minor mid-C20 and late-C20 alterations.
Reasons for Designation
The former lamp house of 1922 at Chatterley Whitfield Colliery is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Historic interest: as a large-scale early-C20 lamp house built to serve a colliery workforce of more than 3,000 men;
* Group value: it has a visual relationship with the Grade II listed office and laboratory building, fitters' shop, and is a component of the country's best surviving colliery from the industry's period of peak production;
* Rarity: a rare survival nationally which, despite the loss of most of the charging equipment, survives substantially intact.
Electric miners' lamps were gradually introduced to collieries from the early C20, as they were not only safer but also offered higher levels of luminosity than had previously been possible with flame safety lamps. In 1914, a South Wales Miners’ Federation conference resolved 'that we press for the general use of electric lamps in mines'. The lamp house (9) at Chatterley Whitfield was constructed in 1920-22 and was where miners collected and returned their lamps and riding checks or tallies at the start and end of each shift. It provided facilities for charging and cleaning electric hand lamps, as well as oil safety lamps which continued to be used for detecting and measuring gas after their use for lighting became obsolete. Electric hand lamps were replaced with cap lamps from 1945. During the late C20 the lamp house was used as a reception area by the museum, but is now (2013) vacant.