Billy Williams

Buckingham Palace, January 1957. From Coal News.

William Bell Williams was commonly known as just "Billy" Williams and was one of Water Haigh's most well known personalities. He was born in Normanton in 1904 and followed his father Frank down the pit when he was just 13 years old in 1917.

Frank Williams had come from Monmouthshire, moving in 1900 to work first at Briggs' Don Pedro pit near Normanton. He later went to Water Haigh shortly after the pit started producing coal in 1911, and rose to become an undermanager.

Billy climbed the ranks too overtaking his father to be the manager from 1940 to 1958, taking the pit through the transition in 1947 from the private ownership of Henry Briggs & Company to the public ownership of the National Coal Board.

For many years he lived with his family at Eshald House which had been bought by the Briggs company and divided into three apartments.

He was highly regarded as a "firm but fair" boss and evidence in the minutes of pit consultative committee meetings shows that he was as understanding of his workforce's welfare as he was of production and profits for the shareholders or the country. In October 1956, along with a Polish miner called Waclow Chrystin, Billy was awarded the George Medal for a rescue attempt underground in which two men were buried under a roof fall.

Click on the links below to hear Joan Williams, who married Billy's son Robin when she was a teacher at Woodlesford school in the 1950s. There are also tales from Fred Lunn who started at Water Haigh in 1958 shortly before Billy was promoted to a more senior job in the No 8 Area of the North Yorkshire coal field. After his retirement Billy became a Conservative councillor for the Rothwell Urban District Council.

Joan Williams remembers her father in law - William Bell Williams.mp3
More pit stories, pit ponies and memories of Eshald House.mp3
Fred Lunn on Billy Williams.mp3

Billy Williams' Water Haigh safety lamp.

The George Medal awarded to William Bell Williams.

Woodlesford

The Story of a Station