embleton: notes on ancient coal mining. 
259 
thing that though coals are so brittle that with the least blow they 
break and with the least pressure they are crushed into pieces, yet no 
time can destroy them, inasmuch that they who pitch land-marks 
were wont to throw them underneath to convince any litigious person 
who shall affirm, though ever so long after, that no land-mark was 
there." 
In Ireland coal was worked at an early period, as the following 
statement proves, although no precise date can be assigned for the 
work. At Ballycastle, in 1770, in a passage cut through one of the 
seams these old workings were entered, they were narrow, their 
sides were encrusted with sparry-like matter. This discovery led to 
a gallery which had been driven forward for several hundred yards. 
It branched into thirty-six chambers. The coal had been worked in a 
regular manner, pillars being left to support the roof. The remains of 
tools and baskets were found in the workings, but there is no state- 
ment of the kind of tools. Near Stanley, in Derbyshire, some years 
ago, some colliers driving in the Kilburn coal, broke into some old 
excavations, in which they found picks made out of solid oak. 
These implements were entirely destitute of metal, and were cut out 
from one solid piece of timber. Implements belonging to an equally 
early period are stated to have been found in old coal workings near 
Ashby de la Zouch, consisting of stone hammer heads, wedges of flint, 
with hazel withes round them, and also wheels of solid wood. 
The Romans were acquainted with the use of coal. They had 
stations in places near the outcrop of coal seams, and coals and 
cinders have been found in the Roman towns and villas. Wigan, in 
Lancashire, was a Roman station. Not far from that town, a bed of 
coal, known as the Arley Main, crops out on the banks of the river 
Douglas. While driving a tunnel to divert the course of this river, 
the Arley seam, 6 feet in thickness, was found to have been mined 
in a manner hitherto altogether unknown. It was found to have 
been excavated into a number of polygonal chambers with vertical 
walls, opening into each other by short passages, and, on the whole, 
presenting a ground plan something of the appearance of a honey- 
comb. The chambers were regular both in size and form over an 
area of at least 100 yards in one direction, and were altogether 
