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Coal and Community Blog


Archives: New Directions in Coal Mining in UK and Japan
On the afternoon of 10 December 2019, the New Directions in Coal Mining History in UK and Japan group visited the Omuta City Library. Omuta,
Grace Millar
Jul 2, 2020


Decay and simulation: New Directions in Coal Mining in the UK and Japan
At the site of the Mikawa mine in Kyushu Japan, a former manrider that had driven people down the drift sits rusting. Nearby other...
Grace Millar
Jun 30, 2020


Barony: A Fight for Life
Towering above the Ayrshire landscape off the road passing the country house of James Boswell’s father to the village of Auchinleck...
Andrew Perchard
Mar 16, 2020


The Records of the National Coal Board
To get to the records of the National Coal Board, you have to go to the National Archives, near Kew Gardens. On your way into the archive...
Grace Millar
Feb 4, 2020


Black History in the Coalfields
In July 1977, a young black man started training at Markham Colliery. We know this because the Markham Manager wrote to the Derbyshire...
Grace Millar
Oct 30, 2019


Painting and Mining in Japan and the UK
Sakubei Yamamoto was born in 1892 and loved painting as a child, but like the rest of his family he had to work in the Chikuho coal mine....
Grace Millar
Oct 18, 2019


Attending the ‘Working Environments and the Body’ Conference, Shanghai, China, April 2018
In April 2018 two members of the project team — Professor Keith Gildart and Dr Ben Curtis — travelled to Shanghai to participate in a...
Ben Curtis
Oct 9, 2019


Coalmining in History and Memory in the UK and Japan
On Saturday 13 July 2019, a group of Japanese scholars from the Japan Association for the Study of Former Coalfields (JAFCOF) marched...
Grace Millar
Oct 1, 2019


Retail and Community: Strikes and Lockouts
On 9 May 2019, scholars from around the country gathered at the University of Wolverhampton for a Centre for the History of Retailing and...
Grace Millar
Jul 23, 2019


Talking Oral History in Belfast and Glasgow
The ‘On behalf of the People’ project has had a panel accepted for the 2019 Oral History Society Conference in Swansea. We were very...
Grace Millar
Apr 17, 2019


Women Working in Coalfield Communities
In 1957, Glenys Hunt was 22 and working as a tracer within the planning department in Bestwood Colliery, Nottingham. She took a further...
Grace Millar
Mar 8, 2019


Dusty Digging: The National Union of Mineworkers Archive
The National Union of Mineworkers headquarters sits on a busy intersection opposite a series of training cafes in a plate glass Barnsley...
Grace Millar
Feb 19, 2019


On Behalf of the People: Work, Community and Class in the British Coal Industry, 1947–1994
On 1 January 1947 the British coal industry was formally brought under state control with signs at collieries erected declaring that they...
Keith Gildart and Andrew Perchard
Mar 1, 2018
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