One of my earliest memories is travelling home in a bus during the early 1950's and wondering why some men were wearing strange helmets. My mother explained that they worked underground in the local ironstone mines, which greatly impressed me. I thought the helmets were made of steel then later found out they were compressed paper and made in Thetford, Norfolk. Ironstone miners travelling on public buses was quite normal as none of the mines ever had baths but the men never appeared unduly dirty.
As drilling was normal in the Cleveland mines one type of helmet had a large rectangular patch on the front to contain a clear plastic(?) visor which could be pulled down to protect the eyes of the drillers.
The men on the bus also talked a completely strange language which I also discovered later was Polish. Quite a large number of such displaced men after the Second World War came to work in the local mines and settled in the area, so that I now know several completely local people with totally unspellable foreign names. However, during the 1960's, several of these "foreigners" had very attractive daughters!!
Simon.
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