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Big Pit Mining Museum
One of the UK's leading tourist
attractions, Big Pit is a real colliery. It was the
place of work for hundreds of men, women and children for over 200 years
- a daily struggle to extract that precious mineral that stoked the
furnaces and lit the household fires of the world.
Kitted out in helmet, cap-lamp and
battery pack, you descend 300 feet to another world; a
world of shafts, coal faces and levels, of underground roadways, air
doors and stables.
Your pit lamp lights the way and
you're guided by an
ex-miner, and with the aid of first-hand knowledge, you get a
real sense of life at the coal face.
The tours take approximately 1 hour
and run regularly from 10.00am - 3.30pm.
Returning to the surface, the
colliery buildings, the winding engine-house, the blacksmiths
workshop and pithead baths complete the picture of a working pit
that at its height employed 1,300 men.
And it's all free!
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