A Historic Industry

For several centuries, coal mining was a huge industry in Britain. Some of the earliest traces date as far back as pre-Roman times, and at its peak in 1913, 287 million tonnes of coal were being produced across the country.

Coalmines were established in regions with high volumes of carbon-based rocks such as Yorkshire, Northumberland, Wales and Kent. From the onset of the Industrial Revolution through to the 1980’s, they played an important part of their local communities by offering hundreds of employment opportunities, though the working conditions were poor.

Today, there are very few remaining coal mines in the UK, and most of the 18 million tonnes of coal consumed each year comes from Colombia and the United States. Though the industry has massively reduced in size, coalmines continue to be a key feature of the heritage and history of the towns in which they once operated.