TRIMDON GRANGE EXPLOSION
Created on 24/03/2017Latest update on 22/11/2025
Artist: Tommy Armstrong
Author: Thomas Armstrong
Year: 1882
Alias The Pitman's Poet. Written following the mine disaster in County Durham with 74 casualties among men and boys. His broadsheet sold 2 million copies. It was set to the tune of Victorian parlour ballad Go And Leave Me If You Wish It, which had also been borrowed by evangelists for a hymn, both in England and the US (where it lives on as Columbus Stockade Blues - see there).
Covers:
- 1962:
Louis Killen [oldest recording, on Topic LP The Collier's Rant - Mining Songs of the Northumbrian-Durham Coalfields]
- 1965:
Maureen Craik [on Topic LP Tommy Armstrong Of Tyneside]
- 1969:
Alan Price [from County Durham]
- 1974:
- 1976:
- 1987:
- 2008:
- 2012:
