ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the geographic location of the extractive industries during the Industrial Revolution. The mining operations of integrated, iron-producing firms have not received as much attention from historians as subsequent activities related to production, perhaps because the costs associated with raw materials extraction were a minimal component of total product cost. It failed to appreciate that large-scale mining predated the advent of the factory system so that a substantially longer time frame existed during which costing systems could be developed and improved. The most extensive mining operations exploited the Northeastern coal seams of Northumberland and Durham, far removed from our initial investigations in the regions around Manchester. The largest collection of business records we have seen for a British Industrial Revolution extractive enterprise documents the activities of the Stella Coal Company and is currently housed at the Durham Record Office.
