On December 21st 1910, just four days before Christmas, the community of Westhoughton in Lancashire was devastated by a huge explosion at the town's Pretoria Pit.

344 men and boys, some barely in their teens were killed in the third worst colliery disaster in the history of British coal mining.

Among the dead were six members of the Wingates band that had been formed in the town just thirty-seven years earlier.

Commemoration

One hundred years later that black day is still remembered and commemorated in the town and Wingates Band, whose membership for decades afterwards included many colliery workers, held a memorial concert and produced a very moving album, the first under their new MD David Thornton.

The album includes recollections of Ben Byers who as a fourteen year old boy lost one of his brothers that day and later became principal trombone with the Wingates Band.

All the tracks in tonight's programme are taken from that album as a Time for Brass tribute to miners everywhere.

10th January:

1. Wingates — J.A. Greenwood
2. The Pretoria Pit Disaster — Tony Berry
3. Abide with Me — arr. Mark Hart
4 Ben Byers Remembers
5. In Pitch Black — Lucy Pankhurst
6. The Pitman — J.A. Greenwood
7. Gresford — Robert Saint
8. Honest Toil — William Rimmer
9. Dead March from "Saul" — Handel arr. William Rimmer
10. Crimond — Jessie Irvine arr. Peter Graham