A history of Coal Mining in Great Britain

Front matter

A HISTORY OF COAL MINING IN GREAT BRITAIN A HISTOEY OF COAL MINING IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT L. GALLOWAY AUTHOR OF " THE STEAM ENGINE AND ITS INVENTORS " bonbon MACMILLAN AND CO. 1882 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved. LONDON : si. Clav, Sons, and Taylor, BRF.AD STREET HILL. PEEFACE. In the following pages an endeavour is made to delineate the principal features in the growth of the great coal industry, with special reference to improvements in engineering, by means of which it has become possible for the miners to open out their deep "subterranean cities" and to procure and bring to the surface the vast quantities of coal which are now annually drawn from the mines of this country. Apart from the value of coal as the mainspring of the great industrial pre-eminence of the kingdom, it is hoped that the narrative may not be without interest of another kind, inasmuch as it furnishes an account of the origin of some of the most VI

Preface

. useful inventions of modern times — as, for example, railways, the steam-engine, and the locomotive — which were almost called into existence by mining requirements, and were long employed by the mining community before they came to be adopted, in a more improved form, by the public in general. At no time were more vigorous efforts being made to promote the safety of the miners in their dangerous occupation than at present. Should the account here given of what has been accomplished in this direction tend to throw any light upon the matter, the circumstance would afford the writer the greatest satisfaction. Ryton-on-Tyne, 9th May, 1882. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. Coal Late Of Coming Into Common Use

— FIRST EMPLOYED BT ARTISANS. — ITS USE IN LONDON PROHIBITED BT ROTAL PROCLAMATION. ovre vriaovs otba Kao-criTepidas eoviras, ffe raiv 6 Kacsa-lrepos ijfu" (poira -—Herodotus. In the early dawn of history Britain was already celebrated for its mineral productions. Centuries be fore the commencement of the Christian era Phœni cian traders sailed hither for supplies of tin — a metal then as now a peculiar product of the Land's End district. It was in connection with the traffic in this metal that our country made its first appearance on the page of history, and received from ancient writers the name of Cassiterides, or Tin Islands. li A HISTORY OF COAL MINING [chap. I, But though we possess records relative to the work ing of tin and other metals in Britain at a remote period, we know little regarding the ancient history of our coal ; indeed, it is evident that the employment of coal fuel to any extent is of comparatively very modern date.

It seems clear that the Romans were not wholly unacquainted with it during their occupation of the country, from the fact of small quantities of cpal and coal ashes having been found among the ruins of many of their stations.1 It is not, however, until a period long subsequent to their departure that this mineral begins to appear among other commodities as an article of merchandise, and to be referred to in terms which are clear and unmistakable. The venerable Bede, who flourished at Jarrow on the southern bank of the river Tyne in the early part of the eighth century, gives us no hint of the use of coal fuel in the north at the time when he wrote. It is true that in speaking of the mineral products of the country he mentions the stone gagates (jet) as existing in great abundance ; and under this term may perhaps be included the coal so plentifully found in the district where he lived.

But to the use of this mineral for 1 The "many beds of cinders" heaped up in the fields in the neighbourhood of North Brierly, in the "West Riding of Yorkshire, mentioned by Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, is not a case in point, as they were not composed of the ashes of coal, as he erroneously supposes, but of the scoriœ, or slag, of Roman ironworks. fuel he makes no allusion, though he notes that when kindled it had the property of driving off serpents.1 The abundant records of the twelfth century which have come down to us seem to show that even at this period wood, charcoal, and peat, continued to be the fuel universally employed for all purposes ; and this century was far advanced, if not quite ended, before we meet with any reliable indications of a commencement having been made to bring mineral coal into use.

In the early Norman era the internal arrangements of common dwelling-houses precluded the use of coal for domestic purposes. Chimneys are mentioned as a new feature which had been introduced into the Norman castles and houses, the massive walls of which admitted of flues being carried up in their thickness. But they were unknown in the houses of the common people. The walls of these were of wood. The fire-place con sisted of a cavity in the centre of the floor, which was covered over when the fire was out ; and at this time it was enacted by law that all fires should be extinguished at a certain hour in the evening, notified by the ringincr of a bell, termed from this circumstance the curfew (couvre feu). The smoke from fires so situated pervaded the whole apartment, and made its escape by 1 The oft-quoted passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in which coal is supposed to be referred to under the name grœfan is at best equivocal, inasmuch as peat is graven, or dug, as well as coal.

It seems more probable that the former is alluded to. B A HISTORY OF COAL MINING [chap. I. 4 a hole in the roof, or by the doorway — a primitive arrangement to be met with even at the present day in some parts of the Highlands of Scotland and west of Ireland, where peat fuel is still employed. Under such conditions it is obvious that the use of coal in the interior of dwellings was altogether inadmissible. The obscurity which prevails regarding the employ ment of coal fuel in early times begins to vanish about the end of the twelfth century, and from this epoch we may date the commencement of the great modern coal trade. Both in England and Scotland coal appears first to have received attention at points where the carbo niferous strata were exposed on the sea shore : a circumstance which seems the most probable origin of the name sea coal, by which the mineral was so long and so widely known, in contradistinction to charcoal, to which the name coal was originally applied.

Conditions peculiarly favourable to the early working of coal existed on the sea coast of Northumberland, and on the shores of the Frith of Forth. In both cases it could be alike easily got (as the coal seams came out to the surface) and easily conveyed to market : a state of things well calculated to promote the growth of a trade in the mineral on its first coming into use. His torical records point to these localities as the cradles of the coal trade. Before the close of the reign of William the Lion (which terminated 1214 A.D.), we find coal beginning to receive attention on the south shore of the Frith of Forth. Thus among the grants made to the monks of Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh, during this reign, one consists of the tithe of the colliery of Carriden, near Blackness, given along with the tithe of the proceeds of the harbour at the same place.

This grant was confirmed by King William, and is supposed to have been made before the end of the twelfth century. In the same reign (between 1210—14 a.d.) the monks of Newbottle Abbey received the grant of a colliery and quarry on the sea shore at Preston, in the lands of Tranent, a district which from this early period downwards continued to be famed for its production of coal. There appear to be no certain allusions to the existence of a coal trade in England previous to the termination of the conflict between King John and the barons, when by the granting of the Magna Charta (1215 A.D.) a greatly increased security was given to subjects in the possession of their lands and rights. Soon after this period, and without any special conces sion on the part of the Crown, we have evidence of a commencement having been made to work coal, and to carry it from the north to London.

As early as the year 1228 a lane in a suburb of the metropolis is mentioned under the name of " Sacoles Lane " (i.e. Sea Coals Lane), clearly showing that some trade in coal A HISTORY OF COAL MINING [chap. I. 6 was now goings on there. This lane was also called Lime-burner's Lane, and it is well known that the burning of lime was one of the earliest uses to which mineral coal was applied. At almost exactly the same date, at all events as early as the year 1236, we find the monks of New minster Abbey, near Morpeth in Northumberland, receiving a grant of some land on the sea shore near Blyth, with a right of way to the shore to obtain sea weed for tillage and sea coal wherever it might be found. The purpose for which the coal was intended is not specified in the above grant, but a few years later (about 1240 a.d.) the same monks received another charter in which sea coal formed the special subject ; and in this case the coal is stated to be conceded for the use of the forge at one of their granges.

From this time forward references to the working and use of coal become sufficiently numerous. To the town of Newcastle-on-Tyne in particular the new trade soon became productive of considerable benefit. Newcastle had been a place of some importance during the Roman occupation of the country, under the name of Pons Ælii — Ælius being the family name of the Emperor Hadrian, who built the great wall from the Tyne to the Solway Frith, about 120 A.D. In the Dark Ages it became the seat of a colony of monks, and took the name of Monkchester. The modern town I grew up under the protection of the Norman Castle built to guard the approach to the bridge across the Tyne. This was termed the new castle, in contradis tinction to the ancient fortifications on the site of which it was placed, and the town of which it formed the nucleus received its name from it.

Newcastle was at first under the jurisdiction of the sheriff of Northumberland, who paid an annual rent of 50/. for it to the Crown, recouping himself out of the tolls and customs arising from its trade ; but in the year 1213 the burgesses succeeded in obtaining the management of the town into their own hands, holding it direct from the Crown at an annual rent of 100/., though at the time it was hardly worth so much. As yet there appears to have been no coal trade on the Tyne. Being a community of traders the burgesses of New castle looked with no favourable eye on the trading proclivities of their neighbours, the Bishop of Durham and the Prior of Tynemouth, and were incessantly engaged in disputes with one or the other regarding the navigation of the Tyne. Not infrequently in the solution of disputed points the burgesses took the law into their own hands.

The establishment of villages on the lands of the above prelates at North and South Shields, near the mouth of the Tyne, where it was alleged " no towns ought to be," was specially objectionable to the burgesses and the [CHAr. I. 8 A HISTORY OF COAL MINING cause of frequent complaint. In connection with a skirmish which occurred at the former village we meet with one of the earliest allusions to the Tyne coal trade. At Newcastle in 1268-9 a number of persons were brought before the justices to answer to the Prior of Tynemouth, " wherefore they had come vi et armis to the Prior's mills at Shields, had burned down the mills, threatened and maltreated some of the Prior's monks whom they found there, and had seized and taken away a ship of the Prior's lying there laden with sea coal," besides committing further damages, for all which satisfaction was demanded by the Prior.

The increase in the revenue of the town of New castle, which took place during the course of the thirteenth century, owing to the rise of the coal trade, is evidenced by the return to an inquiry made in the year 1281, by order of King Edward I., from which we learn that the town was then at times worth 200/. per annum to the burgesses, the advance in its value being ascribed to the new trade in coal. When the working of coal had once been com menced the opening out of collieries soon became general throughout the kingdom, and before the close of the reign of Edward I. (1307 A.D.) the mineral was being dug, though doubtless only on a small scale, in most of the coalfields of England, Wales, and Scotland. In the early period of its history coal was employed for few purposes. The only patrons of the new fuel at first were humble artisans, such as smiths and lime burners, to whose requirements it was peculiarly well suited.

From these it gradually spread to other classes of artificers who used furnaces in their trades. By the bulk of the community coal fuel was regarded with much aversion on account of the disagreeable smoke to which it gave rise. Coal smoke was con sidered to be very detrimental to health. It began to be considered a source of annoyance while the coal trade was still in its infancy. Thus we learn from the annals of Dunstable that in the year 1257 Eleanor, Queen of Henry III., was obliged to leave the town of Nottingham, where she had been sent to stay during the absence of the King on an expedition into Wales, and removed to Tutbury Castle instead, being quite unable to remain in Nottingham on account of the smoke of the sea coal/ Half a century later great efforts were made to check the spread of the use of coal in London on the plea that it was an innovation on established custom and an intolerable nuisance on account of the smoke to which it gave rise.

It appears that towards the end of the reign of Edward I. a great increase took place in the quantity of coal consumed in the metropolis ; brewers, dyers, and others who required much fuel, having commenced to use it I. 10 largely instead of wood and charcoal. But the con sequence of the change told injuriously on the atmosphere of the city. The nobles, prelates, and others repairing to London to attend Parliament and for other purposes, were specially annoyed by the in creasing smoke, and took the lead in getting up demonstrations against the obnoxious fuel, but the great body of the populace joined in the movement. In consequence of the agitation a Royal proclamation was issued in the year 1306 prohibiting artificers from using sea coal in their furnaces, and command ing them to return to the fuel which they had been accustomed to use.

The proclamation, however, appears to have been little attended to by the brewers, dyers, &c, who had already formed a strong attach ment to the new fuel. Complaints continuing to be made, it was determined to have recourse to stronger measures to put an end to the use of coal. In 1307 a commission of Oyer and Terminer was appointed, with instructions " to inquire of all such who burnt sea coal in the city, or parts adjoining, and to punish them for the first offence with great fines and ransoms, and upon the second offence to de molish their furnaces," and to see the proclamation strictly observed for the time to come.

Chapter II. Coal Comes Into Use For Domestic Purposes In The Coal

DISTRICTS. — NUMBEES OF COLLIERIES OPENED OUT IN THE NEWCASTLE-ON-TTNE COAL- FIELD. — KING EDWARD in. PATRONIZES AND REGU- LATES THE COAL TRADE.: — EARLT COAL MINING. " By the leading of coals of this kind to all places within our kingdom the greatest benefit will result to us and our people." — Letters patent of King Edward III.. In the beginning of the fourteenth century the coal trade continued to thrive antl grow, particularly on the Tyne and the Frith of Forth, and to a smaller extent on the estuaries of the Dee and the Severn ; while small workings at many points in the interior supplied the coal required in their own immediate neighbourhood. Purchases of coal figure very commonly in the accounts of numerous castles in the course of erection at this period (e.g. Dunstanborough, Caernarvon, Beau maris, &c), being used by the smiths and lime-burners in connection with the building operations.

Even in the vicinity of the metropolis we find these classes continuing to employ coal without hindrance. Thus in the year 1316 a sum of money was paid out of the Royal Exchequer to one John de Norton, surveyor of works at Westminster Palace, to purchase iron, steel, and sea coal to make divers heads for the king's lances. A little later (1329 a.d.), proceedings were taken before the Lord Mayor of London against Hugh de Hecham, " lymbrennere," for entering into a conspiracy with his fellows to force up the price of lime in the London market ; the evidence of his extortionate charges being that whereas formerly a sack of lime was sold for a penny, when sea coal was at 4<0d. the quarter, now he refused to sell any sack for less than \ld. or 2d., though the price of sea coal had fallen to lGd.

As early as the reign of Edward IL, a commencement was made to export coal from the Tyne to France. Mention occurs of a vessel belonging to the town of Pontoise as bringing a cargo of corn to Newcastle-on- Tyne in 1325, and returning freighted with sea coal. But the most interesting matter connected with the coal trade during the first half of the fourteenth century is the fact that mineral fuel then began to be partially employed for domestic purposes in the coal districts- As the monks were among the first to open out collieries, so they appear to have taken the lead in admitting the new fuel into their dwellings. We find the monhs of Jarrow Monastery using coal in the year 1313, and soon after this date a mixture of wood and coal became the fuel commonly employed in localities where a cheap and plentiful supply of the latter could be obtained.

The difficulties in the way of using coal for domestic purposes appear to have been overcome by improvements in the arrangements of the fire-hearth, and perhaps more immediately by the employment of iron fire-grates or " chimneys " as they were termed. The building of fire-places of stone in the case of wooden houses, or in that of houses not provided with flues in the walls, could obviously not have been accomplished without considerable difficulty and expense. The " iron chimney," on the other hand, could be employed in any house, or even in any part of the house. It was not a fixture attached to the wall like the modern grate, but loose and movable from room to room. These iron chimneys soon came much into use. We are told that they were considered a very important piece of furni ture, and were frequently entailed by will upon son after son in succession.

Associated with them we find mention of the familiar poker and tongs ; these imple ments of the smith's craft having accompanied mineral fuel in its passage from the forge into a wider sphere in ordinary house fires. The coal trade was now becoming established on a broader basis, and the steady increase in the demand for coal which ensued gave rise to the opening out of [chap. II. 14 A HISTORY OF COAL MINING numerous additional collieries. In the Great Northern coalfield (of Northumberland and Durham), many mines were brought into operation during the course of the fourteenth century, particularly on the banks of the Tyne, where peculiar natural facilities existed for carrying on a coal trade. On the north side of the Tyne in the lands of Elswick, which lay immediately to the west of the town lands of Newcastle-on-Tyne, we find the monks of Tynemouth, the owners of the royalty, letting various collieries on lease in 1330 and subsequent years.

Shortly afterwards (1351), the burgesses of Newcastle obtained a licence from King Edward III. to work the coal in two portions of the town-lands, named the Castle-field and the Frith,1 in order to aid them in the payment of their annual rent, the town having suffered severely in common with other parts of the kingdom from the pestilence which ravaged England in the middle of this century. A few years later (1358), the king likewise granted the burgesses the coal in the Town Moor for the same object. In addition to the collieries on the north side of the Tyne, a considerable number of mines on its southern bank poured supplies of coal into the market at New castle. In 1356, the Bishop of Durham had five mines 1 This grant is usually stated to have been made by Henry 111. more than a century earlier.

The error originated with Gardner in 1656, and has ever since passed current. let on lease in the Manor of Whickham, and others at Gateshead ; and in the surrounding district the work ing of coal was actively going on at Birtley, Fugerhous, and Winlaton. Edward III. was the first king to interest himself in the Tyne coal trade, his attention being frequently drawn to the subject in various ways, more especially in connection with disputes regarding the shipment of coal. He issued several writs for the regulation of the trade, and granted letters of protection to the owners of collieries on the south side of the Tyne by which they were allowed to carry their coal across the river to Newcastle, and after paying the customs of the port, to take them to any part of the kingdom or to Calais, which was at this period the only place on the Continent to which the staple commodities of England were allowed to be exported.

He also gave his sanction to coal being loaded by the heel instead of being measured in the detailed manner which appears to have been employed while the trade was insignificant. The keel is a class of vessel peculiar to the Tyne, and to the coal trade. It is a broad flat-bottomed boat of oval form, designed to carry the heaviest load with the least draught of water. Its name and origin are both Saxon, and its history goes back to the advent of the Saxons in England, Verstegan informing us that the first detachment of Saxons crossed from the Continent in three keels. The size of the keel used in the coal A HISTORY OF COAL MINING [CHAP. II. 16 trade was fixed near the end of the fourteenth century. At this period it carried twenty chaldrons of coal, on each of which a duty of 2d. was paid to the Crown by merchants and strangers not possessed of the freedom of Newcastle.

But while the size of the keel has remained the same down to the present day (about twenty-one tons), the size of the Newcastle chaldron (on which the duty was paid), was gradually much increased until fixed by law long afterwards when it had attained to upwards of twice its original proportions. Not only on the banks of the Tyne but at many different points in the Great Northern coalfield the working of coal was being carried on in the latter hah of the fourteenth century. Already at this time collieries had been opened out at Lumley, Cocken, and Rainton, on the River Wear ; and further south at Hett, Coxhoe, Coundon, Evenwood, Softley, and Cockfield Fell. We also hear of coal mines at Plessey, near Blyth, in Northumberland : and have evidence of small collieries being worked in other parts of the same county.

In the system of mining no less than in the coal trade matters were already assuming a settled form at this epoch. The holes and quarries from which the supplies of coal were at first obtained had in the middle of the fourteenth century been superseded by regular mine works, consisting of pit and adit, or vertical shaft and horizontal gallery. This arrangement was simple and effective, and remained the typical form so long as coal workings were only carried on above the level of free drainage. The shaft was employed for raising the coal by means of a windlass, or jack roll, worked by manual labour ; the adit,1 or water-gate, served to drain off the water from the workings ; while the two combined produced a natural ventilation sufficient for the shallow and limited workings of these early times.

Even at this period coal leases were beginning to be drawn out with considerable care and detail. In the earliest leases of which we find mention (such as those granted by the monks of Tynemouth about 1330 A.D.), a certain rent per annum was alone reserved by the lessors, without any stipulation as to the quantity of coal allowed to be worked for the same. But the necessity of making the quantity of coal drawn from the mine bear a fixed relation to the amount of rent paid soon became felt, and as early as the middle of the fourteenth century provisions were introduced for this purpose. At first this was effected by simply limiting the quantity of coal which might be worked. Thus in a lease of five mines at Whickham, made by the Bishop of Durham in 1356, it was stipulated that the lessees might not draw from each mine more than one keel 1 This word occurs in a variety of forms which seem to point to its being a contraction for aqiieduct.

C [OH UP, ii. 18 A HISTORY OF COAL MINING (twenty-one tons) per day. The arrangement of limiting the quantity of coal to be worked was the plan usually adopted in leases, until the introduction of the more improved modern method of having both a fixed and a sliding, or tonnage rent, which makes the amount of rent to be in exact proportion to the quantity of coal worked.

Chapter III. The Increasing Scarcitt Of Wood Causes Coal To Come Into

GENERAL USE FOR DOMESTIC PURPOSES. — FIRST DIFFICULTIES IN THE MINES. " Thou didst swear to me sitting by a sea-coal fire." — Shakspeare. A scarcitt of materials appears to exist relative to the coal trade during the fifteenth century, but not so with reference to the mines, and we have evidence of a steady increase in the demand for coal from the gradual extension of mining operations which was going on, many new coal tracts being brought under contri bution. The extension, however, was on the same lines as before ; the supplies of coal were still obtained from shallow workings ; while the produce of the mines was chiefly consumed by the inhabitants of the coal districts, or of the maritime towns, or exported to the Continent. By those altogether unaccustomed to it, the use of stones for fuel was regarded with curiosity.

Æneas c Ill 20 Sylvius (afterwards Pope Pius IL), who visited Scotland in the capacity of papal legate in the middle of the fifteenth century, mentions in his Commentaries that he saw the poor people who begged at the churches going away quite pleased with stones given them for alms. " This kind of stone," he adds, " being impreg nated with sulphur or some fatty matter, is burnt instead of wood, of which the country is destitute." Even about a century later it seemed to surprise Leland to find the population of the English coal dis tricts using coals in their fires in places where supplies of wood could still be had. He explains the circumstance by stating that coal was found plentifully there, and " sold good chepe." During the sixteenth century the coal trade entered upon a period of greatly increased activity.

A con siderable demand for coal had sprung up on the Continent, and large quantities were exported thither from the Tyne and the Frith of Forth. In the year 1546 we find an order sent to Newcastle by King Henry VIII. for 3,000 chaldrons of coal to be forwarded to Boulogne, in France, with all possible despatch. Artificers in France were already relying to a large extent on supplies of coal from Newcastle. A letter written in 1552 speaks of Newcastle coal as "that thinge that France can lyve no more withowte than the fyshe without water," for without this, says the writer, " they can nother make stele worke, nor metall worke, nor wyer worke, nor goldsmythe worke, nor gunnes, nor no manner of thinge that passeth the fier." The exportation of coal appears to have been a very lucrative trade at this period.

We hear of it being bought at Newcastle for 2s. 2d. per chaldron and sold in France at thirteen nobles, or 4/. 6s. 8d. But the scarcity of fuel at home caused this drain upon the resources of the country to be viewed with a degree of alarm. The question of prohibiting the export of coal was under the consideration of the English Parliament in 1549, and was frequently discussed from time to time during subsequent years. One proposal made was that all the best coal should be kept at home, but that foreigners might have the benefit of the inferior sorts. No actual steps, however, appear to have been taken to check the [export trade in England, but in Scotland, where the decay of the " coal heuchs " was already becoming a source of anxiety, and the gravest fears were entertained of the speedy exhaustion of the coal fields, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1563 pro hibiting all persons from transporting coals out of the realm under penalty of confiscation of the ship and cargo. ' This Act sets forth that coals were becoming the common ballast of all empty ships, which was occasioning " a maist exorbitant dearth and scantnesse of fewall."