Boffo

Recently reading a book on Staffordshire by Vivian Bird from 1974. He covers the mines around Essington, which fitted in with my family history & part of the topic here. My great grandfather was William Bate, known locally as Bill Sinker, as he used to sink mines in the area. He also worked with his son William later on the same work. Among the mines he sunk was the struggling monkey, so named because it was sunk from underneath upwards, after a line had been driven from a previous pit horizontally. My grandfather was born in 1885 at 10 Bell Lane Bloxwich. His wife was born in Essington.