Spennymoor is a town and civil parish in County Durham, England. It is south of the River Wear and is 7 mi (11 km) south of Durham. The civil parish includes the villages of Kirk Merrington, Middlestone Moor, Byers Green and Tudhoe.
Thurnscoe is a village in the metropolitan borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. The village falls within the Dearne North ward of the Barnsley MBC. Historically within the West Riding of Yorkshire, the village is approximately 9 miles (14 km) from Barnsley and 8 miles (13 km) from Doncaster. It is served by Thurnscoe railway station with bus links provided by Stagecoach.
Murton is a village in County Durham, England. Lying eight miles (13 km) east of the city of Durham and six miles (9.7 km) south of Sunderland, it has a population of 4,534, increasing to 7,676 at the 2011 Census.
Brodsworth Colliery was a coal mine north west of Doncaster and west of the Great North Road. in South Yorkshire, England. Two shafts were sunk between October 1905 and 1907 in a joint venture by the Hickleton Main Colliery Company and the Staveley Coal and Iron Company.
Haig Colliery Mining Museum was a visitor attraction in Kells, on the site of Cumbria's last deep coal mine on the cliffs above Whitehaven in Cumbria, England. It closed in January 2016 due to insolvency.
The National Coal Mining Museum for England is based at the site of Caphouse Colliery in Overton, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It opened in 1988 as the Yorkshire Mining Museum and was granted national status in 1995.
A pit pony, otherwise known as a mining horse, was a horse, pony or mule commonly used underground in mines from the mid-18th until the mid-20th century. The term "pony" was sometimes broadly applied to any equine working underground.
The Gresford disaster occurred on 22 September 1934 at Gresford Colliery, near Wrexham, Denbighshire, when an explosion and underground fire killed 266 men. Gresford is one of Britain's worst coal mining disasters: a controversial inquiry into the disaster did not conclusively identify a cause, though evidence suggested that failures in safety procedures and poor mine management were contributory factors. Further public controversy was caused by the decision to seal the colliery's damaged sections permanently, meaning that only eleven of those who died were recovered.
Agecroft Colliery was a coal mine on the Manchester Coalfield that opened in 1844 in the Agecroft district of Pendlebury, Lancashire, England. It exploited the coal seams of the Middle Coal Measures of the Lancashire Coalfield. The colliery had two spells of use; the first between 1844 and 1932, when the most accessible coal seams were exploited, and a second lease of life after extensive development in the late 1950s to access the deepest seams.
Rhondda Heritage Park, Trehafod, Rhondda, South Wales, is a tourist attraction which offers an insight into the life of the coal mining community that existed in the area until the 1980s.
The Minnie Pit disaster was a coal mining accident that took place on 12 January 1918 in Halmer End, Staffordshire, in which 155 men and boys died. The disaster, which was caused by an explosion due to firedamp, is the worst ever recorded in the North Staffordshire Coalfield. An official investigation never established what caused the ignition of flammable gases in the pit.
Hamstead Colliery in Hamstead, England, produced coal between 1878 and 1965, by mining the South Staffordshire 'Thick' coal seam. It suffered a major fire in 1908 in which 26 men died.
Coal mining in the United Kingdom dates back to Roman times and occurred in many different parts of the country. Britain's coalfields are associated with Northumberland and Durham, North and South Wales, Yorkshire, the Scottish Central Belt, Lancashire, Cumbria, the East and West Midlands and Kent. After 1972, coal mining quickly collapsed and had practically disappeared by the 21st century. The consumption of coal – mostly for electricity – fell from 157 million tonnes in 1970 to 18 million tonnes in 2016, of which 77% was imported from Colombia, Russia, and the United States. Employment in coal mines fell from a peak of 1,191,000 in 1920 to 695,000 in 1956, 247,000 in 1976, 44,000 in 1993, and to 2,000 in 2015.
The Lancashire Coalfield in North West England was an important British coalfield. Its coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests in the Carboniferous period over 300 million years ago.
Harraton is a former civil parish and now a suburb in the unparished area of the town of Washington, in the City of Sunderland metropolitan borough, in Tyne and Wear, England. Harraton is near the River Wear and is 3 miles north-east of Chester-le-Street, 2 miles south-west of Washington town centre and 9 miles south-southwest of Sunderland.
Bentley Colliery was a coal mine in Bentley, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, England, that operated between 1906 and 1993. In common with many other mines, it suffered disasters and accidents. The worst Bentley disaster was in 1931 when 45 miners were killed after a gas explosion. The site of the mine has been converted into a woodland.
Phoenix Park is a park in Thurnscoe, South Yorkshire, England, that is currently owned by The Land Trust and maintained in partnership with The Conservation Volunteers. It is built on the former site of Hickleton Main Colliery, which ran from 1892 until 1988 when it was closed. The park is 3.3 miles (5.3 km) long.
The Prince of Wales Colliery was a coal mine that operated for over 130 years in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England. It was permanently closed in 2002 after geological problems were found to make accessing remaining coal reserves unprofitable, and most of the site was later converted for housing.
