id="Anchor-8"/>[8] As property in this lane belonged to William 'de Plessetis,' it is probable that the coal was brought from Plessey, near Blyth, in which neighbourhood the monks of Newminster were given the right to take coal along the shore about 1236.[9] The monks also obtained leave from Nicholas de Aketon about the same time to take sea coals in his wood of Middlewood for use at their forge of Stretton, near Alnwick. It may be remarked that at this time, and for the greater part of the next three centuries, the use of coal was restricted to iron-working and lime-burning, the absence of chimneys rendering it unsuitable for fuel in ordinary living rooms. So particularly was it associated with lime-burning that we find Sea Coal Lane also known as Lime-burners Lane, and references in building accounts to purchases of sea coal for the burning of lime are innumerable.

It is in 1243 that we get our first dated reference to an actual coal working. In that year Ralf, son of Roger Wlger, was recorded to have been drowned 'in a delf of sea coals' (in fossato carbonum maris).[10] The use of the word fossatum is interesting, as clearly indicating an 'open cast working,' that is to say, a comparatively shallow trench carried along the seam where it comes close to the surface, a step intermediate between the mere quarrying of outcrop and the sinking of regular pits. An indication of the spread of coal mining is to be found in one of the articles of inquiry for the Forest Assize of 1244, which relates to 'sea coal found within the forest, and whether any one has taken money for the digging of the same.'[11] It is probable that special reference was intended to the Forest of Dean, coal being worked about this time at Blakeney, Stainton, and Abinghall; from the last named place a penny on every horse-load of coal was paid to the Constable of St. Briavels, as warden of the Forest.[12] By 1255 the issues of the Forest of Dean included payments for digging sea coals, and customs on all sea coal brought down the Severn.[13] Some of this latter may have been quarried in Shropshire, as about 1260 Walter de Clifford licensed Sir John de Halston to dig for coals in the forest of Clee,[14] and there are other indications of the early exploitation of the Shropshire coal-field. The Midland field of Derbyshire and Notts was also working, coal being got in Duffield Frith in 1257,[15] the year in which Queen Eleanor was driven from Nottingham Castle by the unpleasant fumes of the sea coal used in the busy town below,[16] a singularly early instance of the smoke nuisance which we are apt to consider a modern evil. Half a century later, in 1307, the growing use of coal by lime-burners in London became so great a nuisance that its use was rigorously prohibited, but whether successfully may be questioned.[17]

By the end of the thirteenth century it would seem that practically all the English coal-fields were being worked to some extent. In Northumberland so numerous were the diggings round Newcastle that it was dangerous to approach the town in the dark, and the monks of Tynemouth also were making good use of their mineral wealth;[18] in Yorkshire coal was being got at Shippen at least as early as 1262,[19] and in Warwickshire and at Chilvers Coton in 1275.[20] The small Somerset field near Stratton on Fosse and the Staffordshire coal measures may be possible exceptions, but in the latter county coal was dug at Bradley in 1315 and at Amblecote during the reign of Edward III.[21] The diggings were still for the most part open-cast works, but pits were beginning to come in. These 'bell pits,' of which numbers remained until recently in the neighbourhood of Leeds,[22] at Oldham in Lancashire,[23] and elsewhere, were narrow shafts sunk down to the coal and then enlarged at the bottom, and widened as far as was safe—and sometimes farther, if we may judge from a number of instances in Derbyshire in which miners were killed by the fall of their pits.[24] When as much coal as could safely be removed had been obtained, the pit was abandoned and a fresh pit sunk as near to it as possible. As a rule the old pit had to be filled up, and at Nuneaton we find this very properly enforced by the bailiff in 1343,