A LOST chronicle of the region's worst-ever mining disaster has been shown to The Advertiser.

Within the yellowing pages of the diary - written at the time but never before seen by historians - is a vital clue to how many of the 168 men and boys who perished in the 1909 Burns Pit Disaster were buried in unmarked mass graves in the old council cemetery behind St Andrew's Church, Stanley.

The Advertiser is committed to finding out which of the victims lie in the burial trenches in order to have those graves marked. The diary offers evidence of the numbers who were buried in two of the trenches.

Its writer, Stanley miner Sedgeman Nankavel, appears to have counted the numbers of men buried in one trench at 48 and another at 17.

Sedgeman was a former Cornish tin-miner, 40 at the time, who had settled in Stanley after earlier spending time in Cumbria and, briefly, in Canada.

The journal also mentions the story that was the talk of Stanley on the day of the explosion - the murder of 11-year-old Mary Donnelly.

Reflecting the shock felt by many in the then bustling coal town, Sedgeman tells of the finding of little Mary's body and of the man condemned for the crime, Jeremiah O'Connor, who was sitting in a condemned cell at Durham Jail on the day of the disaster on February 16.

He also writes of other matters of interest to an Edwardian pitman. It records the best way to make a pea trench, how to make turpentine and transcribes passages from the Bible.

But the sometimes amusing jottings change dramatically on the page wrongly dated January 16, 1909.

Without resorting to crude emotionalism Sedgeman, no expert in grammar, powerfully records the scenes in Stanley's most dreadful week. Individual sentences from the journal read: "The pall of death hung over the whole neighbourhood it was a week never to be forgotten."

"The bringing home of the bodies the heart-rending scenes at the pit."

"Wherever you look you was brought face-to-face with death. There borne on the shoulders of those who was once their companion in life was the last remains of some of the victims of the awful disaster."

Sedgeman's grandson, Dr Eric Sanders of Pelton, near Chester-le-Street, saw the journal for the first time just two weeks ago.

He said: "I'm researching my own family history and got talking to my cousin who lives in Coventry. She told me about this journal she had and so, when I was in that part of the world heading for Cardiff, I dropped by. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw those pages and, when I read about the stories of the graves in the newspaper, I thought they might be of interest.

"I would have wondered if he had copied his words out, but the bad grammar has convinced me they were his own words.