The Coal Authority Maps

The Coal Authority has a GIS site where you can identify the locations of previous activity to mine for coal.

This was a big part of my life growing up in South Yorkshire. My grandfather and other family members were coal miners and we knew there were coal seams running under our village and surrounding areas - I remember a house collapsing from subsidence once. Now you can find these signs of the past on this map from the Coal Authority.

The miners' strike was something else I remember well. Several friends spent a lot of time marching and fund raising. Our minibus was occasionally stopped when carrying out undergraduate fieldwork as the police thought we might be flying pickets.

The village where I lived was only a few miles from the Maltby Colliery, and there was a lot of ill feeling between those who stayed out and those who went back. Orgreave was only about four miles from home too and the TV coverage of the time was all over the local news in the evening. This was a desperate time for many. There has been a number of recent TV dramas and documentaries as it is now coming up to 40 years on from the strike - amazingly.

All aboard the Windrush Line

A lot of coverage of this story this week, not all of it positive. 

Londoners have become very familiar with the names of the underground lines, including the new Elizabeth Line (originally Cross Rail) and the Jubilee line (with their Royal choice of names). Now Sadiq Khan has outlined new names for the overground lines to aid discussions about particular routes - Londoners and visitors will quickly adapt to their new names, but there have been some predictable moans about the nature of the names... from the usual suspects.

In Year 7, we study the story of the Windrush generation, through the use of the book 'Windrush Child' from the late Benjamin Zephaniah.

This BBC News page explains what the names of each of the lines means.

Image source: Transport for London

The Windrush Line will run through several areas associated with the Windrush migrants (in London at least).