Mining

Coal is the remains of plants, that lived in swamps millions of years ago. You can actually see the stems and fibres of the plants in fossilised soil between each coal seam, like the tree stump depicted in this old print.

The plants which formed the coal grew in swampy deltas next to tropical seas. Repeated rise and fall of the sea led to the forests being submerged, covered in silt, drained and then able to grow again. This process lasted millions of years and the plant remains eventually turned to coal through the immense pressure of layers of sediment on top.

The coal seams no longer lie in neat layers but have been broken and folded by earth movements and erosion over millions of years. This is why there were so many small mines being worked in several different places in the area.

Examining the remains of plants in fossilised soil between coal seams is one way we can find out what plants grew 300 million years ago in the East Shropshire coalfield. The descendants of some of them still grow today, like the horsetails. These are the flowering spikes of horsetail growing on a river bank.