IT WAS a bleak and desolate picture as a skeleton workforce posed for archive pictures of a once thriving and profitable coal mine.

Wistow Mine, hailed 20 years ago as a showpiece pit and a template for future mines, is already overgrown with weeds and grass.

Nearby, rusting away on the colliery surface, is some of the world's most modern mining hardware that has been salvaged from coalfaces and tunnels half-a-mile underground.

The workforce is now down to 80 and the last salvaging shift surfaced yesterday with a couple of commemorative chunks of coal from the Barnsley seam.

Posing for the press photographers, they were not sure whether to smile for the camera or look back in anger.

Father-of-three David Johnson, 43, a deputy at Wistow since it opened 23 years ago, brought the last piece of coal out of the pit.

He has secured his future by taking over the village store at Huntington, near York, with his partner, Christine.

He said: "It's a sad day. When we arrived in Selby we were told we had a job for life, but it wasn't to be.

"I'm sorry to go even though I've seen more of my workmates than my partner while I've been here. But that's mining for you - it's a way of life.

"Running a village store will be a healthier lifestyle, but I will have to take a significant dip in wages.

"The pit has been good to me. I earn more than £33,000 a year at Wistow, which bought me a four-bedroom detached house at Thorpe Willoughby and paid for the deposit on the shop. What is galling is that there is still plenty of coal down there to be mined, but a lack of will from the Government to invest in it.

"The Government wants to shut all the pits because we supply coal to power stations, which then pollute the atmosphere. We are paying a heavy price and so will the country when we have to rely on coal from abroad."

Underground worker Roger Barron, 53, revealed that some coalface workers and tunnellers were earning up to £1,000 a week before Wistow closed.

He said many of the redundant miners were now finding it very difficult to find jobs.

Updated: 10:40 Friday, May 14, 2004