Mining in the North East
- Category: Silksworth and area
- Published: Sunday, 05 April 2020 21:37
- Written by Administrator
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Here, as elsewhere, the origin of coal-mining is lost in obscurity, and it is quite uncertain when coal was first used as fuel. It is highly probable that the first coal used in this coalfield consisted of the rounded lumps of coal washed up on the beach from the seams that outcrop along the sea-shore in Northumberland, and that these were collected and used as fuel, just as they are used to-day by the poorer fishing folk along the Northumbrian coast. It could not be very long before the outcrops of similar material in the valleys of the Derwent and other rivers also attracted attention, and these coal seams would then have been attacked and gradually followed downwards, thus forming the commencement of the industry of coal-mining. It is probable that the coal picked up along the shores was originally known as ‘sea-coal,’ and that which was dug out of the ground as ‘pit-coal,’ the words ‘sea-coal’ and’ pit-coal’ that so frequently occur in documents of the seventeenth century showing apparently that the two terms bore somewhat different meanings at one time, although the material described by them was also recognized as being identical.
One of the difficulties of determining the real beginning of the use of coal lies in the indiscriminate use of the word ‘carbo’ to designate both charcoal and mineral coal. The notices preserved in the Boldon Book of the smiths at Wearmouth and Sedgefield and of the colliers at Escombe who in Bishop Pudsey’s time were bound to provide coal (carbonem) for the making of plough-shares relate more probably to charcoal fuel, as is certainly the case in the almost parallel though rather later record in the register of Worcester Priory of the holding of one John the collier who was to make each coke of coal for 1d.
There is however no doubt that the rich and powerful bishops of Durham in their capacity as counts palatine favoured the development of coal-mining in their principality at a very early period, and it is to this fact that we owe the greater completeness of the records of the industry in this part of the country as compared with other portions of Great Britain.