mining


During the industrial revolution landowners throughout Britain became rich on the proceeds of mineral deposits found deep beneath their estates. Coal was the ‘black diamond’, yielding a carbon-crusted fortune to families such as the Fitzwilliams of Wentworth or the Pembertons of Trumpington Hall. The primacy of the land-owning families was nearly universal. The only major exception to aristocratic domination was found in the thoroughly egalitarian freeminers […]

Digging the freeminers