Question

Explain the geographic context for the use of coal to power industrialization in Great Britain in the late 1700s

Answer 1

Great Britain’s coal resources come from sediments from the Carboniferous age – 300 million years ago-, which rotted under anoxic conditions of sands, silts and mudstones and extend under the North Sea and onshore lands of Northumberland, Durham, North and South Wales, Yorshire, East and West Midlands, Kent, Lancashire and the Scottish Centrl Belt. It took more than ten thousand years to the peat for reaching a thickness of ten metres, enough to make about one metre of coal under the increasing pressure of sediments. Mostly, minig settls in the 1700s  were carved, structured with tree trunks and branches and covered with bricks unto 150 foot depth. People always worked there in terrible conditions, including women and children.