Taken from The History, Topography, and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham by Francis Whellan. Second edition published in 1894.

To its coal-mining industry Durham is chicfly indebted for the high rank it holds amongst the English counties, the benefit derived being estimated not according to the direct marketable value of the minerals, but by their influence in developing the manufacturing power of the country. With regard to the coal trade, it can scarcely be necessary for us to point out to the reader its vast importance.

It has been asserted by some writers that the early Britons worked coal, but we have no satisfactory evidence on the subject prior to the later days of the Roman occupation, when roads had been made through many of the coal-producing districts. Coal cinders have been found amid the ruins of several of the Roman stations in Durham, Northumberland, and Lancashire, and more recently at Wroxeter, the ancient Uriconium, the destruction of which dates, according to reliable authority, from the sixth century.

It was not until the thirteenth century that we obtain clear proof that coals were systematically raised for fuel. In 1239 King Henry III. is stated to have granted a charter for this purpose to the townsmen of Newcastle-on-Tyne; and so early was the produce of their pits attracted to London, that by the beginning of the following century great complaint arose on the injury done by the coal smoke to the health of the citizens. In 1306, on petition by Parliament, King Edward I., says Stowe, "by proclamation, prohibyted the burneing of sea-coale in London and the suburbs, to avoid the sulferous smoke and savour of the firing; and in the same proclamation commanded all persons to make their fires of wood." Not twenty years, however, passed away when, owing to a gradually pressing scarcity of wood, coal was again landed in London.

One of the earliest manufactures which depended on the use of coal was glassmaking, which commenced about 1619 on the banks of the Tyne.

In the year 1635 a proclamation of King Charles, prohibiting the importation of foreign glass, set forth that "Sir Robert Mansell had by his industry and great expense perfected that manufacture by sea coal, or pit coal, whereby not only the woods and timber of the kingdom are greatly preserved, but making of all kinds of glass is established here, to the saving of much treasure at home, and the employment of great numbers of our people."

Up to the end of the seventeenth century pit coal was employed for little else than household purposes, but it is not possible to obtain statistics of the quantity raised excepting the amounts that were shipped. London and the east and south-east, as well as some Continental ports, were supplied by Newcastle and Sunderland, which about 1704 shipped off in a year respectively 178,143 chaldrons, or 473,080 tons, and 65,760 chaldrons, or 174,264 tons. In 1750 the vend from both ports together amounted to 1,193,457 tons.

Meanwhile the beginning of the eighteenth century was marked by the first wavering steps of the infant Steam, so soon to develop into the mighty giant, depending for his strength on coal, himself making possible the extraction of fuel from amid difficulties till then insurmountable, and opening a thousand new methods for its consumption and application. Thus far coal had been valued for the production of HEAT only, it was now to enter on a second phase of usefulness – that of the generation of FORCE.

About the year 1803 there was brought into practical application another grand employment of coal, the production of light. For upwards of a century various experiments, and latterly on a manufacturing scale, had been made on the distillations of coal in order to procure tar and oils; whilst the application of the invisible gases produced was strangely neglected, notwithstanding attention had been called to the moderately lighting properties of the fire-damp so largely evolved from many of the northern collieries. Soon after 1792 Murdock, the engineer in charge of some of Boulton and Watt’s engines, suggested that the gas might be conducted through tubes and employed as an economical substitute for lamps and candles. To light him on his homeward way over the Cornish downs he used to carry a bag of gas under his arm, with a lighted jet before him, and tradition still tells of his frightening the superstitious miners whom he met in the dark, by a sudden squeeze of his bag, which threw out a long flame, taken assuredly for the fiery tongue of the arch-demon himself.

On the rapid extension of gas manufacture we need not dwell, nor detail the amount of fuel required for the production of this indispensable adjunct of modern civilisation.

The year 1830 witnessed the commencement of another great drain upon our coal mines, originating in what appeared to be a more economical use of coal. The application of the hot blast by Neilson to iron furnaces saved so large a proportion of the coal needed for the smelting of each ton of pig iron, that the great majority of the ironworks were forced by competition to adopt the same method, in spite of a very common belief that the quality of the produce was thereby injured. The result has been an enormous increase of the total quantity of coal used for this purpose, with a much greater increase to the iron trade. By the application of the hot blast the same amount of fuel reduced three times as much iron, and the same amount of blast did twice as much work as previously.

Concurrent with this great improvement was the employment of the abundant and economical mixture, the "black band," for the discovery of which Britain is indebted to Mr. Mushet.

In the absence of accurate data, it is estimated that ten million tons of coal were raised in Great Britain annually at the beginning of the present century. but it was not until the facilitation of traffic by means of steamboats and railways that the absorbing march of the present epoch commenced. When these were proved to be a triumphant success, they led to imitation in foreign countries and to enormous multiplication in our own; a new system of distribution of raw material may almost be said to have started. The London district alone now receives by sea, railway, and canal upwards of five million tons per annum.

Many new and striking applications of coal have within the last few years rewarded the exertions of chemists. The once useless and fetid products of its distillation have been made to yield sweets, scents, and savours. From its naphtha are obtained the paraffine oil, and the beautiful, translucent, solid paraffine, which, in its purity and brilliancy, excels wax itself; from its tar is produced that wonderful extract saccharine, which surpasses all others in concentrated sweetness; while from its aniline are obtained a galaxy of brilliant colours, among which need only be mentioned the popular mauve and magenta, to prove the varied forms under which the products of coal have found their way into the useful arts.

It was roughly estimated that for the year 1850 the production of all the British coal-mines was 42,000,000 tons. In 1853 Mr. T. Y. Hall, of Newcastle, after much investigation, stated the British production to be 56,550,000 tons.

At length in 1854, through the instrumentality of Mr. Robert Hunt, of the Government Mining Record Office, aided by the recently appointed inspectors of coal-mines, we obtained reliable statistics ; and the following table will command the attention if it does not excite the astonishment of every reader :—