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Those of us born into the cosy world of the Mining communities tend to have very fond memories. It wasn't that things were easy. They weren't. Things were very hard indeed, and we all lived with the coal dust, the pit buzzers and the endless stream of coal wagons across the countryside. It was the natural order of things. It would never be any different.

The shock now is how quickly the traces of the coal mines have been wiped from the landscape. Its almost Orwellian how the history has been hidden from view. Areas like Elsecar have moved from being a busy coal village dominated by Elsecar Main Colliery to a quaint tourist attraction with a steam railway and a science museum. And they were the lucky ones. Most pit villages are forgotten about and suffering. All within a generation. Even in Elsecar the graffiti on the road sign gives a clue to the hardships the people still feel. "Hell-secar". The scars of change are not healed by Heritage Centres.

Jack Hulme spent the whole of his life documenting the ordinary life in Fryston, a pit village just north of Castleford in West Yorkshire, on the banks of the River Aire. It was built in the shadows of Fryston Colliery which closed in '85 - specifically to house the mineworkers. The only way in was via the railway bridge. Jack Hulme lived all his life in the village and his photographs of the world around him is a unique portrait of a world we have now lost forever. His pictures make the place look like a heaven on earth. A lost paradise of community and family. Scrubbed steps and Sunday School.

Yorkshire Arts Circus, who discovered Jack's 10,000 images during an appeal for 'local voices', put his photographs on show in Pontefract in 1986 and attracted 10,000 visitors. His work has now travelled across Europe and provides a unique inside view of ordinary life in the coalfields. Jack himself, in his 80's before anyone outside of Fryston had heard of him, took to fame like a duck to water.

In 1988, just before he died, Jack observed "I feel a little bit sick of heart. I've been robbed of something I've always lived with."Fryston Colliery is long gone, and all trace of it wiped from the landscape. But for those of us with long memories, Jack has brought it all to life again. It is a world we can all relate to and a vision we can all treasure. We won't forget.

Cheers Jack! Thar Alreet!

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The Godlike Genius of... Jack Hulme

A unique eye on a lost world