When the last pit near Castleford (see below) closes in December that will represent the end of a 150 years of industrial production in rural coal seams and communities of Britain. Not everyone loves the miners but as someone who grew up in the Nottinghamshire Coalfields and had a number of relatives who “worked down the pit” the end of this industry and the cultural and community legacy it left feels like the loss of something more fundamental than the loss of simply (and tragically a few hundred jobs). The article tells us:

The UK’s very last deep pit coal mine is about to close. The BBC’s former labour and industrial correspondent, Nicholas Jones, reflects on the end of an era.

Coal heated our homes, fuelled the industrial revolution, and over the centuries provided millions of jobs in coalfields across the UK, but soon deep mining will be no more, and a way of life is about to end.

“It’s absolutely heart-breaking,” says Dave Douglass, a former pit delegate and secretary who has spent his life working at the recently-closed Hatfield pit near Doncaster.

“The only way that a non-professional working class lad could earn a decent living, buy a house and get a decent car and holiday was by being a miner, and being a miner was a very proud thing to be.”

Before it shut down in July, Hatfield was one of only three remaining privatised deep pit mines in the UK.

Thoresby in Nottinghamshire also ceased production in July. Both are now being dismantled, leaving just Kellingley pit near Castleford – and that’s closing in early December.

Britain’s largest producer of coal, UK Coal Operations, is understood to be seeking voluntary liquidation after a devastating fire closed its Daw Mill colliery.

The company announced the closure of Daw Mill in north Warwickshire with the loss of 650 jobs in March after the worst coal-mining fire in 30 years.

The fire at Daw Mill was the latest blow to the industry following Hargreaves Services’s decision last year to mothball the Maltby mine near Rotherham with the loss of 500 jobs.

UK Coal Operations is now seeking voluntary liquidation to avoid being forced into insolvency, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. The company had lost £100m of equipment, £160m of coal and incurred £35m in costs, making further restructuring inevitable, Andrew Mackintosh of UK Coal Operations told the paper.

“We are doing everything we can do to save 2,000 jobs and maximise the returns to creditors,” he said.

Voluntary liquidation would allow a subsidiary to run the firm’s surviving mines, which include some of the UK’s last deep mines – Kellingsley in North Yorkshire and Thoresby in Nottinghamshire – as well as six open-cast mines in north and central England. Creditors would receive an estimated 32p in the pound if the company went into voluntary liquidation, but just 3p in the pound if it was forced into insolvency, according to company estimates seen by the FT.