From the acclaimed author of Britain's Lost Cricket Grounds and Britain's Lost Breweries, comes a journey underground to the mines that built the nation and defined a century. Twenty minutes from the Regency elegance of Bath and half an hour from the Glastonbury Festival, you might notice looming over the Somerset village of Paulton what appears to be a dormant volcano. In reality it is a colliery spoil tip, and one of the few reminders that until the 1970s men worked here far beneath the green fields of England - digging for coal. Walk the clifftop path hugging the Cornish coast: those gaunt brick chimneys and wind-ravelled winding-houses are the ruins of a once vast tin-mining industry. Until very recent times hundreds of thousands of men dug deep underground - sometimes miles out under the sea - for all kinds of minerals and ores, from slate in North Wales to gold in Dorset. Their labour was the most backbreaking of all, amidst swirling dust and sweltering temperatures, and the mines they descended scarred and re-made the landscape. But the closure of Daw Mill colliery in Warwickshire in 2013 confirmed the almost total demise of this once-ubiquitous and proud industry, whose pithead baths and winding-wheels have since disappeared under retail parks, football stadia or at best become part of the heritage industry. Now, in Britain's Lost Mines, Chris Arnot seeks out thirty lost mines within Britain's shores, from Scotland to Kent, where men mined anything from fluorspar to salt, iron ore to copper, and re-discovers the unique culture that spawned brass bands and male voice choirs, terrifying fast bowlers and rock-hard rugby league players. Illustrated throughout with a stunning array of photographs, and filled with the reminiscences of the ex-miners he meets, he evokes a vanished and truly remarkable way of life for men who did not just work together, but played, sang and drank together as brothers under dust-encrusted skin, looking out for one another as they risked their lives daily. Within a generation, most of our miners will no longer be with us; this mesmerising book will help ensure their history is in no danger of being buried forever.

This book contains 127 stories of Lost Mines and Treasurers, in New England, covering the States of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. Many of the stories concern treasurers buried by the French, British, Indians and Colonial settlers during the many wars that rocked the area in the 18th and 19th centuries. I have also included a few stories from early newspapers on the Treasure of Oak Island, which discuss the early history of the site. It seems that interest has been revived in the area by a Television Show, which has run for five seasons, seeking the treasure believed to be there. At the end of 2017 they actually found a piece of 16th century jewelry containing a faceted Rhodonite Garnet and a lead cross, and a few pieces of hardware. I found the data for this book while doing research on old mines for my series of books Mines of the American West. The "Lost Mines and Treasurers" were identified from articles in early American newspapers and other sources considered reliable. Where possible, for those lost treasures still to be found, I have tried to tie them to modern mines or areas and include some background data on such areas. In doing this, some of them seemed to "fall short" in the area of fact and logic. The reader should understand that this is a collection of data from old and new publications and not a focused specifically on the effort to find the specific properties, although some research, especially from a logic standpoint, has been done. If the reader can glean critical information from these original articles and the limited research that allows or helps him or her to locate a "lost mine" or "lost treasure", I wish him or her well and leave it to them to reap the rewards.The print version of this book has been produced in the 81⁄2" X 11" format to keep the price low. If done in 6" X 9" or smaller, the book would be 2 or 3 times as many pages in length and would cost substantially more to increased "on demand" print costs. These seem to be heavily influenced by the total number of pages. While this may be one of the seeming drawbacks to "on-demand printing", the benefit of "on-demand printing" is that specialty books, such as this, are now practical to publish where the target market may be relatively small and minimal returns to the author are acceptable.

This is a new release of the original 1946 edition.

No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday – and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday, the heroics and betrayals of the Miners’ Strike, and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. Coal was central to the British economy, powering its factories and railways. It carried political weight, too. In the eighties the miners risked everything in a year-long strike against Thatcher’s shutdowns. Their defeat doomed a way of life. The lingering sense of abandonment in former mining communities would be difficult to overstate. Yet recent electoral politics has revolved around the coalfield constituencies in Labour’s Red Wall. Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson draw on decades of research to chronicle these momentous changes through the words of the people who lived through them. This edition includes a new postscript on why Thatcher’s war on the miners wasn’t good for green politics. ‘Excellent’ NEW STATESMAN ‘Brilliant’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ‘Enlightening’ GUARDIAN

Discover and explore Britain's extraordinary history through its most beautiful lost ruins. From crag-top castles to crumbling houses lost in ancient forest, and ivy-encrusted relics of industry to sacred places long since over-grown.