ABSTRACT
The mining of coal in Yorkshire began several centuries prior to the period covered in this volume. Records are increasingly obscure the further one goes back and provide no more than a partial picture of the beginnings of the industry and the early burden of the miner. But there is evidence of organised extraction of the mineral for local use well before the fifteenth century. The eastern dip of the coal bearing strata has always been a factor of critical importance in shaping the history of the mining industry in the region, bearing directly on the development and decline of mines and colliery villages and on the very nature and health of local communities. When mining began in earnest, pits were first sunk on the western side of the field, where outcrops proved the existence of the mineral.1
