Journey's end: last of England's open-cast mines begins final push

Hartington site in Derbyshire will be allowed to eke out last of its coal over rest of year owing to pandemic

Few in the small town of Staveley, near Chesterfield, could have predicted that an overlooked industrial site on its outskirts would play host to the end of thousands of years of coal mining in England.

The Hartington site stands unassumingly within the green hills of Derbyshire where it produces a small handful of coal, in industry terms, alongside gravel and construction grit. It is also, by chance, England's last open-cast coal mine in a history that dates back to Roman times.