Architecture and the Face of Coal

With only a handful of British coalmines remainingactive and with targets set to reduce carbon emissions, the coal industry nowseems to be heading towards extinction. Yet, it was coal that turned Britaininto a world-leader during the Industrial Revolution and established theconditions for the modern state. In the 20th century, it generated buildingprogrammes on a massive scale concerning miners’ welfare, settlements andhousing. The form, space, organisation, and aesthetics of architecturebecame of critical importance not just to the process of the industry’s modernisationbut also how it was perceived and understood both within and outside itsworkforce. But despite the centrality of coal mining and its workers to thedevelopment of modern Britain, as well as the contemporary recognition thataspects of its innovative architecture received, its built legacy has often beenoverlooked and physically almost completely erased. Divided into three parts, thisis the first book which provides a critical and comprehensive examination ofthe architecture of coal in Britain and how it responded to the needs of theindustry and, perhaps more significantly, its labour force.

 

Part I explores the relationship betweenthe architecture of coal and the provision of welfare. While this produced aseries of enlightened built projects for miners and their communities especiallybetween the wars – educational buildings, reading rooms, holiday camps, welfareinstitutes, sports grounds, swimming pools, medical centres, children’splaygrounds, etc. – it focusses on the paradigmatic integration of aestheticsand programme seen most emphatically in the creation of over 600 pithead baths.Part II looks at settlement and the relationships between responses to oftenadverse conditions within domestic environments in mining settlements and thedevelopment of broader and influential theories and practices concerninghousing. Finally, Part III explores the modernisation of the industry duringthe post-war period arguing that that architectural design and representationbecame pivotal to the functional and symbolic requirements of the newlyNationalised entity and its position within, and singular contribution to,post-war society.