10 Years After

Polbrook Gurney Colliery, September 1983. Compared to the olden times when the inch high people were up to no good, here we see the colliery in its final year of operation. But the mine did have the honour of being the last of the Somerset collieries, it outliving Kilmersdon by 10 years at nearby Radstock.

The former canal basin in the foreground hasn’t been used for a good 20 years and is now silted up, it doesn’t take long for nature to take back control. The Pedant & Armchair hasn’t served a pint for a few years now, the owner retiring in 1979. The pub is just a private dwelling these days, but the signage remains. 

Rolling the clock forward 10 years from this photo, very little of this scene will be recognisable apart from the retaining wall hidden behind the wagons. The former pub will by then have lost its signs and floral displays and be boarded up, the owner having passed on. Living alone it took 6 months for the passing to be discovered, the flies exiting of the letterbox drawing attention to the owner’s lonely demise. 

By the mid 2000s, the whole area will be a new build housing estate of unimaginative identical brick boxes of the type with tiny high wooden fenced gardens all crammed in. At least 4 ‘dwellings’ occupy the pub site alone. 

Today the estate looks rather rundown, with cars parked everywhere only outnumbered by the many different coloured wheelie bins we all have to endure these days. And of course the recycling one is never big enough, so half filled black bin liner bags are perched on top to take the excess, with the local fox population having enjoyed the contents of any bags that have fallen to the ground overnight. Microwave chicken tikka masala packaging being a favourite of the many vermin. 

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