Pit pony lights up building work; HELPER: Pip at Beamish

Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England), April 4, 2008

PIP, a 33-year-old pit pony, trotted along to lend a hoof at the latest project at the North East's open-air museum.

Work has recently started on a lamp cabin in the Colliery Yard at Beamish Museum, near Stanley, and Pip offered a little horsepower to contractors Lumsden and Carroll.

The colliery lamp cabin is representative of early 20th Century colliery architecture across the region.

All collieries had one of the buildings in order to maintain and distribute safety lamps to the men working underground.

The lamp cabin will be an accurate period exhibit the museum's fine collection of miners' lamps will be displayed there.

It will also house displays providing information about the coal industry and pit life.

Visitors will begin their drift mine tour by collecting their own lamp before venturing underground to see how coal was worked. The attraction is due to open next spring.