“Thousands of years of English coal mining will near an end this week with the closure of one of the country’s last remaining coalmines in Bradley near Durham.”

I was like, thousands?

Yep. Wikipedia:

“Coal mining in the United Kingdom dates back to Roman times.”

The deets:

“…Bradley will extract its last coal on Monday 17 August, two months after its sister site at Shotton in Northumberland ended its own coal production.
“The closure leaves only the Hartington mine in Derbyshire, which had planned to shut at the start of the month, as the last surface mine in England still eking out its remaining coal reserves for longer than expected.”

So what’s left?

“England’s remaining surface mines have reached the end of their lives less than five years after miners emerged from Britain’s last deep coalmine, the Kellingley colliery in North Yorkshire, for the final time in late 2015. In England, only small underground mines in Cumbria and the Forest of Dean continue to produce modest amounts of coal.”

Coming to the end of a very long era.