Posted on 18 Dec 2015

43 Pictures That Show The Dust And Sweat Of Britain’s Coal Mines

Deep coal mining in Britain has come to an end. We do our own mining of historical snaps.

BuzzFeed Staff

As Kellingley Colliery coal mine closes in North Yorkshire this week, marking the end of centuries of deep coal mining in Britain, we take a look at historical photos from the 20th and 21st centuries.

(above) "A pit pony pulling a tub full of coal at Brinsley Colliery, Nottinghamshire. Coal was mined in the Eastwood area for nearly 700 years. Originally, the monks of Beauvale Priory held the coal mining rights and there may have been shallow workings dating further back to Roman times. By the 1870s the good quality 'top hard' coal at Brinsley had been almost exhausted and a second shaft was sunk in 1872 to a depth of 780 feet. At its peak of production the colliery produced around 500 tons of coal a day and employed 361 men, 282 of whom worked at the coal faces. By 1930, coal reserves had been exhausted but the shafts were kept open until 1970 to access neighbouring pits. The Brinsley Colliery site has now been landscaped and turned into a picnic area. This photograph was taken by the Rev FW Cobb (1872-1938), who was Rector of Eastwood from 1907 to 1917. Many of his photographs were taken under extremely difficult and dangerous conditions and combine to make a remarkable contribution to mining history during the early part of the 20th century."

(above) Women and girls are pictured in the Lancashire coalfields, where they are employed on one of the noisiest and dirtiest jobs in mining - that of "screening" stone, shale and rubbish from the coal as it passes on a conveyor belt from the pithead to awaiting railway wagons.

General scenes at the Saltley Coke Depot in Birmingham, as the miners attempt to close the depot down during their strike. A speech by a Yorkshire Miner's activist, Arthur Scargill, persuaded tens of thousands of Birmingham-based workers to come out on strike in sympathy with the miners and many of them joined the picket lines at Saltley. This meant that they outnumbered the huge police presence and the gates of Saltley were shut at last.