Black coal in a cellar

No black cats, and actually the 'cellar' wasn't a coal cellar, but the basement at the BCLM. This is one of the objects in the archive - the last piece of coal mined from the Baggeridge Colliery I think. It was rather worrying photographing it as in moving it small pieces were falling off - I didn't remove them all, as I felt it adds to the character of the subject. We did take a photo with a ruler in front of it, but to give some scale I should say that it took two people to lift it, and it was about 50cm long.