IN 1979, the National Coal Board took out a full-page advert in a national newspaper. It showed a drawing of Britannia, wearing a miner’s hat and holding a lump of coal in her hand.

“Britain has the energy to carry on for at least another 300 years!” boasted the headline.

How wrong can you be.

Yet when that advert was published, it was only a couple of years since the Selby coalfield had been inaugurated in 1976 - seeming to offer the promise of plentiful coal for decades to come.

The Duchess of Kent visited Wistow in October 1976 to officially inaugurate the new coalfield. There was said to be enough ‘black gold’ to last 30 years or more.

York Press: The future of coal? The Duchess of Kent at the inauguration of Selby Coalfield at Wistow, October 1976The future of coal? The Duchess of Kent at the inauguration of Selby Coalfield at Wistow, October 1976 (Image: Archive)

Yet, as we now know, it was all to end in tears less than 30 years later.

The miner’s strike of 1984/5 didn’t help, of course.

But the problems with the Selby coalfield went far deeper – literally.

There was plenty of coal down there. The problem was, the coal seam was fragmented by major faults – making the coal much more difficult and costly to extract. “It’s like having a dinner plate on a table in front of you, and then treading on it and having it break into 15 or 20 different pieces,” said UK Coal spokesman Stuart Oliver.

The upshot was that a complex of five mines and one distribution hub, which at the height of its success had been digging out 12 million tonnes of coal a year, was by 2002 struggling to produce less than five million tonnes. And it was losing money: £30 million a year between 2000 and 2002.

The writing was on the wall.

York Press: Miners finishing their shift at Wistow Colliery on Tuesday July 16, 2002, following the announcement that coal production was to be phased out. Miners finishing their shift at Wistow Colliery on Tuesday July 16, 2002, following the announcement that coal production was to be phased out. (Image: PA/ John Giles)

The first two of the Selby pits had already closed in the 1990s: Whitemoor in July 1996 and North Selby in 1997. Then, in July 2002, UK Coal announced that coal production at the three remaining mines was to be phased out over the next two years, with the loss of 2,100 jobs.

That’s exactly what happened. The remaining three pits closed in 2004 – Wistow in May, Stillingfleet in July, and Riccall in October.

York Press: A miner finishes his shift underground at Wistow CollieryA miner finishes his shift underground at Wistow Colliery (Image: PA/ John Giles)

Photographers were on hand as the miners got news in 2002 that the mines were scheduled to close – and were there again, a couple of years later, as they worked their last shifts.

The expressions on their faces says it all…