THIS family of miners may well have gone home to a real fire after their shift down the pit, but likely as not, not a real bath.

Back in 1951, the Telegraph was on hand to capture on film this father and three sons, all known as Mr Eccles, returning to the surface as black as the coal they had been mining at Hoddlesden Colliery.

And with pit head baths not introduced until 1953, nightly baths and Monday wash days must have been a back-breaking chore for the poor women of the household.

There had been a mine on Hoddlesden Moss since the mid 1800s, closely linked with the pipe industry - as well as coal, fire clay was also mined - which went into the manufacture of sanitary pipes, fire bricks, chimney pots and tiles.

This particular shaft and main intake drift, mined by the Eccles, had been sunk in 1934 by Joseph Place and Sons and at its height employed more than 200 miners and three dozen surface workers.

By 1941 it was producing 27,000 tons of coal and 32,000 tons of fire clay, and it had its own railway line direct to the local pipe works.

Taken over by the newly created National Coal Board in 1947, it only had another 14 years of productivity, closing in 1961.