The Whitehaven Colliery Through Time

Coal was the very bedrock on which Whitehaven was built, the trade in coal with Dublin starting after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Shipping ever increasing quantities of coal to Ireland brought another industry to the town – shipbuilding.

In the seventeenth century, the Whitehaven pottery began, local coal firing the kilns. Coal mining fathered several more local industries, including chemicals, iron ore smelting, glass bottle making, foundries, engineering and even the railways made use of phenomenal quantities of coal