Entitled: "Even on pre-steam industrial railways gravity helped to load wagons with coal as here at South Hetton colliery." The South Hetton Coal Company, owned by Colonel Thomas Brady, first sank shafts in 1831. Large scale production began two years later and corresponded with a large increase in population. Employment peaked in the 1930s when over 1400 people worked at the colliery. However, activity declined in the latter half of the 20th century with the colliery ceasing operations in 1982. The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and, since the 1880s, has been widely used to generate electricity. In the United Kingdom, and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery. Coal mining has had many developments over the recent years, from the early days of men tunneling, digging and manually extracting the coal on carts, to large open cut and long wall mines. This image has been color-enhanced.