Miners and the Great War

British miners contributed crucially to the Great War by supplying coal and enlisting en masse, facing immense sacrifices.

At the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, despite many difficulties and falling manpower, coalmining was the most important industry in Great Britain. It employed around a million persons in well over 3,000 pits ranging from small hillside drift mines with a few hands to substantial collieries with workforces and pit communities the size of villages and small towns. A fe...