1940s Mining Life
20/21 
Living history interpreter as Fred at the pit head baths, in his cloth cap.
© National Coal Mining Museum for England (Photo: Phil Butcher)
© National Coal Mining Museum for England (Photo: Phil Butcher)
Older miners wore cloth caps for work into the 1950s and even the early 1960s. In the 1930s the majority of miners would have worn cloth caps both underground and on the surface as it was not mandatory for miners to wear hard hats or helmets until the 1960s. Even into the 1960s and early 1970s many men wore cloth caps or flat caps as part of their everyday clothing and elderly gentlemen continue to wear them today.