The Romans mined coal in Britain, and somewhere in the archives is the record of a mosaic floor of a Roman mansion unearthed in a farmer’s field not far from the house where I was born that was ploughed up when the farmer found that people insisted on trawling across his field to look at it. I’m pretty sure the same field was the last resting place of an unexploded bomb during the second-world war. Some farmers, it seems, are just plain unlucky. Surface mining is recorded at Cossall and Selston in the 1270’s and continued to grow and spread. By the 17th Century shallow mining was a major industry in the county and Henry the VIII dropped a wife off in Nottingham once, but she soon left again because the smoke from the coal was too much to bear. By 1870 the county had 50 coal mines producing 2m tons of coal. By 1905 the same pits were producing over 10m tons.