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From 1800 to the mid twentieth century the burning of coal provided nearly all of the power for British industry and transport. It also provided heat for homes. By distillation it produced gas for lighting and cooking and coke for the production of iron. Coal has been mined in many parts of Great Britain, but the major coalfields were in central Scotland, northern England, the Midlands and South Wales. This book tells how mines evolved from simple bell pits into extensive networks of shafts and tunnels extending deep underground. It describes the methods used to drive tunnels through the rock and the machines that were developed to cut the coal. It explains how the coal was transported from the coalface to the shaft, a task performed variously by women or children with sleds or baskets, pit ponies, rope haulage systems, conveyors and locomotives, and it describes the winding engines used to lower men and equipment into the mine and to bring them and the coal back to the surface. Coal mining has always been a dangerous occupation, and Geoffrey Hayes recounts the measures taken over the years to minimise the danger from the great hazards faced by miners: roof collapse, toxic and inflammable gases, lack of oxygen and flooding.

• If there was firedamp in the mine, a slight spark might set off an explosion. 439 miners lost their lives in Britain's worst mining disaster, an explosion at Senghenydd, South Wales, in 1913.
• Canaries, being highly sensitive to carbon monoxide, were essential to pit rescue teams. In the days before electronic detectors, the birds were the only means of detecting the presence of this deadly gas.