The Coal Mining Industry of Sheffield and North East Derbyshire

Once employing thousands, with many collieries dotted all over the area, coal mining in the East Midlands has all but gone. Once tens of thousands depended on mining. Ken Wain tells the story of mining, its triumphs and disasters.

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The culmination of some forty years of research sees Ken Wain tell the story of the mining industry in this part of South Yorkshire. He tells the life stories of the many collieries from Chesterfield to Sheffield. With some 900 shafts in Chesterfield alone, and hundreds in the Sheffield area, Ken gives an insight into the growth of coal and ironstone mining in the region, as well as some of the human stories of disaster, and of working and living conditions for the miners and their families.

He covers the period from the medieval times to the bitter miners’ strike of 1984/85 and its damaging aftermath, which effectively killed Britain’s deep mining industry.