Today, we learnt what it was really like to be a coal miner on our trip to the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield, South Yorkshire.
It was an early (8 o'clock start) when we climbed on the bus for the traffic-delayed two-hour journey. The class were brilliantly behaved and praised by our driver for the day.
When we arrived, it was straight to the pit head where we donned hard hats and special light kits for the 140 m trip down below the surface to where the underground mining tour began. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take anything with batteries below the surface, so there are no photos of our experience in the dark so far down below the Earth's surface.
We travelled down in a cage lift and the class were all incredibly brave as we descended for two minutes into the darkness.
The tour took us on a journey back to Victorian Britain, where we were able to see a family mining: the father hewing the coal: the mother carrying the coal; the children hurrying and thrusting the coal carts; and the youngest child sitting in total darkness, holding the traps that controlled the air flow in the mine.
We journeyed through the underground tunnels and through time, seeing the introduction of pit ponies and the advent of machinery and its development . The children were able to experience the narrow tunnels where they had to crawl to move around. Eventually, we arrived back at the cage lift and ascended the 140 m back to the surface.
We then went to look at an exhibition of the history of mining where we learnt more about the safety lamps that we had seen underground, as well as some of the machinery that was used and the methods of communicating with each other.
After lunch, we then participated in two workshops: the life of a child miner in Victorian Britain; and the role of pit ponies in mining history.
