Author: Purple Brolly

Bede (672/3-735) was a monk who spent his life in Northumbria, mostly in St. Paul’s Monastery in Jarrow. He is the earliest historian of England of whom we are aware. As a dedicated scholar and teacher, he wrote prodigiously, with perhaps 60 books to his name. These covered a range of topics but the most famous is his 5-volume ‘Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum’ (HEGA) which records the country’s conversion to Christianity, thereby including many interesting supplementary details.

Bede gathered his information from the Monastery’s library of 300 books (huge for that time) and from witness accounts, traditional legends, Vatican documents and correspondence with other monasteries. Fortunately, HEGA avoided oblivion during later Viking/Danish occupation as it was copied for distribution all over Europe. It was translated into Old English 150-200 years later and finally put into print some 750 years after Bede’s time.

Through HEGA, Bede promoted the use of the ‘Anno Domini’ (A.D.) counting system for calendar years. His study of timelines included verifying the annual calculation of the date of Easter. In 836 the Church declared him ‘Venerable‘ and in 1899 he was made a saint and a ‘Doctor of the Church’. His industry was thus rewarded posthumously and his legacy is part of British culture.

(Image [cropped]: Lawrence OP at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Britain has utilised its vast natural coal resources for 1,000 years and many inventions (including railways) arose by way of improving mining safety and efficiency. Coal was essential to the Industrial Revolution since it was the means by which iron was produced. For centuries households had coal-fired boilers and homes would have individual bunkers or cellars for coal storage.

Mining areas were renowned for community spirit engendered by shared toil in difficult conditions. This was a big factor in the miners’ strike that ran from March 1984 to March 1985.

Yorkshireman Arthur Scargill (1938-) led the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against 20 pit closures, the first of 75 scheduled over a 3-year period. Miners from Yorkshire, Durham, Scotland, Kent and South Wales went on strike, but others in North Wales and Nottinghamshire did not. Margaret Thatcher‘s government rejected the NUM’s arguments and after thousands of  sackings and picket-line arrests and injuries, the strike failed and still workable mines closed.

When the coal industry was nationalised in 1947 there were 850 collieries employing 700,000 men producing 225,000,000 tons of coal per year. Controversially, the National Coal Board (now the ‘Coal Authority’) proceeded to shut down almost all operations, with the last remaining deep mine ~ Yorkshire’s Kellingley Colliery ~ closing in 2015.

(Top image of march in Port Talbot 1984: Alan Denney at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)