ABSTRACT
The most important fact in connection with mining, during the eighteenth century, was the introduction and gradual extension of the use of steam-power, more especially of Watt’s steam-engine. This rendered possible deeper and more economic mining. The centre of the British coal industry was Newcastle, the freemen of which had received, in 1234, a charter from King Henry III authorizing them to engage in coal mining. By the year 1700 mining had commenced in all the British coalfields; but, except in Northumberland, Durham, and Shropshire, the miners had done little but nibble at the outcrop. Machine mining was first attempted in the seventeen-sixties; but despite the greater leverage obtainable, hand-driven machinery was never successful. The growing insufficiency and comparative inefficiency of the “sea-coal” obtained from the shore outcrops at Newcastle, and the consequent development of methods of deeper coal-mining, eventually led to the discovery and increasing use of so-called “stone-coal” obtained from anthracite beds.
