I visited Woodhorn Colliery Museum when I was on holiday. It was a fully working colliery a few years ago. Now it has an exhibition showing pit life through the ages. At one time there was 250,000 miners in the North East alone, but now there are none.
It was an incredibly hard job. Kids were sent down the pit aged 14. They had to crawl along narrow tunnels, dragging a pick and shovel behind them and then kneel for hours, hacking away at the coal face. No health and safety in those days and no protective clothing either, so inevitably their health suffered.
Housing - supplied by the colliery owners - was very basic. Cramped conditions, no electricity, no running water and disease was rife. If the father of the household was killed while working down the mine, the family was evicted from the house. A stark existence for a people who could rightly be described as the salt of the earth. | 
