English Coal Mining History at the NCMME

The underground at the museum is the only publicly accessible underground deep coal mine in England, one of only two in Britain and three in Europe. The underground tour begins at the lamp room, where visitors are divided into groups of nineteen and are provided with a helmet, belt and lamp. They descend the original eighteenth-century shaft in the company of an underground-trained miner. The tour covers the history of mining from the early nineteenth century, when women and children worked underground, through hand-getting and early machinery, up to a fully mechanised face.