In March of 1803, a notice in the York Courant trumpeted the forthcoming sale by auction of the “MANOR and DEMESNE of BASEDALE ABBEY,” an estate furnished with a “COALMINE supposed very considerable.” One imagines that the allure of a rich seam of coal lent the whole sale a dash of speculative glamour. The “considerable” seam, however, appears to have been a matter of faith rather than fact, as the subsequent phrasing “Here coal was expected” coyly suggests. Indeed, the venture seems to have flickered only briefly, lasting no more than a decade, with little to show beyond these ruins and, perhaps, long-forgotten expectations.
By all accounts, this was a small-scale venture, involving a few bell pits and one grand shaft plunging a respectable 32 metres—though the mine’s brawniest labourer may well have been a horse, tethered to a gin and tasked with hauling coal and spoil up from the depths. Once a seam was found, the miners would have struck out in small tunnels, shoring them up with wooden props. Inevitably, the fetid air would eventually have driven them to abandon the pit as it succumbed to the stale atmosphere and start afresh.
This ‘Moor Coal’ was of poor quality, found in thin and intermittent seams, to be used for domestic fires or in lime kilns. Transport relied upon carts and panniers trudging along the specially constructed Ingleby Coal Road, now used as a Landrover track. The ruins in the photo—huts and workshops—suggest that the miners might have indulged in some modicum of comfort, though the stonework seems suspiciously sound for such a transient endeavour, so perhaps, as some have suggested, an old monastic cell of Baysdale Abbey was repurposed with a certain rustic ingenuity.
It should be said, of course, that in medieval times coal was hardly used at all. The good people of those days had to gather wood for their fires or perhaps dabble in charcoal-making. However, much has changed since then. On September 30th of this year, we saw the final breath of coal-fired power in Britain, as Radcliffe-on-Soar’s station closed, ceremoniously marking the UK as the first G7 nation to renounce coal entirely. Open since 1967, this station’s farewell signals a remarkable trajectory from the inception of the world’s first coal-fired power plant at the Holborn Viaduct in 1882. Before then, coal, of course, had found its place in powering steam engines—the foundation of our Industrial Revolution. And Armouth Wath? A minor character, you might say; a modest entry on the cast list of the Industrial Revolution. But, like so many of history’s footnotes, it had its moment.
Sources
- Gill, M. C. (2010). The North Yorkshire Moors Coalfields (Yorkshire’s Other Forgotten Coalfields) (Vol. 17). Mining History: The Bulletin of the Peak District Mines Historical Society.
- Thomas, Carl “The Moorland Collieries of North Yorkshire” undated
- Goldring, Denis. “Along the Esk”. Published by Peter Tufts
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