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Nine hundred years ago on the beaches of Northumberland, Durham and the Firth of Forth sea coal was gathered. The seams outcropped along the seas edge and lumps of coal were washed ashore like any other rock.
The coal was gathered for the monks to use and for one hundred and fifty years after the Norman's conquest we know no more of its history. Then from the great Abbeys and Monasteries of the North East news of coal was carried by pilgrims travelling from one part of the country to the other and by 1270 coastal ships had started to transport coal from Tyneside to as far south as London.
Where the coal lay near to the surface people dug trenches to get it and then coal mining developed. Two kinds of mine were used. One was sunk into an outcrop of coal from the surface and was known as a bell pit because of its shape. The other was a drift mine driven into the hillside or river bank where the coal seam emerged.
The bell pits were sunk where the coal lay only a few yards below the surface. One man, a "pit man" as he was already called would dig out the coal with a helper, usually his wife to fetch and carry. The pits were crude with no supports and as much coal as possible was hewn before the sides threatened to cave in. The pit would then be abandoned and another started nearby.
One of the ancient laws was that a second pit should be set at the distance a miner could throw a shovel full of rubbish from the pit he had worked out.
In the drift mines two or three miners won the coal while boys or women dragged it to the entrance.
Then the need for coal increased. By the fourteenth century artisans were using it extensively in their workshops and in 1367 it was allowed to be exported to France.
These hillside workings were often extended deeper as the coal was easy to get at and only the best and the thickest seams were worked.
They were threatened by only two dangers, water and stale air. Stale air, or choke damp as it was known could suffocate and kill. The only sign of its presence was the slowly dimming of a candle and if seen in time it could be dispersed by fanning the air which the miner would do with his jacket or a piece of cloth kept handy for the purpose.
Then water, a problem that was to remain with coal mining for the next six hundred years.
Steadily and constantly it seeped down from the surface into the coal faces and at times threatened to make them unworkable.
In this primitive stage of coal mining history the water was drained away along small tunnels driven to the end of the drift from the hillside or river bank at a point lower than the main entrance. This also helped to ventilate the mine and reduced the dangers from choke damp.
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