For a digital reconstruction of this notebook please click here.  

Mottled grey paper-covered boards quarter-bound in black cloth 200 x 130 mm, with a label measuring 80 x 46 mm attached inside the front cover printed J. Bryce Smith Ltd/Artists Materials./117, Hampstead Rd./London N.W.1. The front cover is inscribed upside-down in pencil 7.45 Wednesday/Hadham/recreation/ground/Sunday 10.30. The book originally contained 62 pages of cream lightweight wove paper 200 x 127 mm in one signature of fourteen and four of twelve. The pages are perforated 12 mm from the spine. All pages are unsigned and undated; they are numbered in pencil upper right on the recto. Pages 2, 11, 12, 14, 16 and 21 have been removed at the perforations and are missing. This notebook is frequently cited by the artist in inscriptions on the drawings in Coalmine Notebook 1942, where he refers to it as 'pit notebook'.

The artist has drawn mainly in pencil and crayon, with some patches of ink. Due to the thinness of the paper, the medium is often visible on the other side of the page.

In August 1941 Moore was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee to draw a series of coalmining scenes in Wheldale Colliery, Yorkshire, where his father had worked at the beginning of the century. Moore did not begin his observations in the mine until December of that year. In a letter to Herbert Read dated 29 December he wrote: 'I now know more or less what in particular I'd like to look at over again.' Moore is known to have made more than one visit, spending seven days down the pit in January 1942. (Five photographs by R. Saidman of Moore sketching in Wheldale Colliery were published in Illustrated magazine on 24 January 1942.)

The drawings in this notebook are the only ones made in situ, and from these sketches he filled another three books with worked-up drawings done at Hoglands, completing the commission by June 1942. Eleven drawings were taken by the WAAC and donated to museums and galleries.