Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Historically, how much would a British miner have earned for a hard day's work?

What would they have worn underground?

And how did adding baths to the pit heads create much-needed change?

In conversation with Loring Good for today's Everything You Wanted to Know episode,

Professor Robert Coles explores the history of working down British minds and explains how despite it being brutal hard,

there was also beauty to be found.

We're talking all about mining history today.

And I think much of our conversation might lean towards history in more recent centuries.

But let's start at the very beginning with a question we've had from

Instagram. How did mining in the UK actually begin? Well, it's a funny old world, isn't it?

There was a time when pieces of coal were everywhere. They got up your nose, they got in your

fingernails, they were in every street, they were in every house.

Coal was everywhere. Now my grandchildren don't know what coal is. So suddenly it became all important.

And that was in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first recorded instance of digging coal was in Roman times.

But I think the real point is it was until the 17th century, 18th, 17th, 18th century,

that coal became important to us. Up till then, most burning, most fuel was done by wood. But the Romans,

of course, were first in so many things, and there they were digging away for a bit of coal.

I've no idea what they used it for. Heating, I would imagine, domestic heating. Now, you've talked a bit

about coal there, but that's not the only material we've mined in the UK.

And we've got some other questions asking, what else have we mined for in history?

The Welsh had a bit of a gold rush at one point.

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