Although the exploitation of coal resources in England did not reach significant levels until the Tudor period, the growth of output during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a vital prerequisite for the industrial revolution. Professor Nef went so far as to argue that this growth, at a time of crisis in the timber industry during the century prior to the civil war, amounted to an industrial revolution in itself. Be that as it may – and considerable doubt has been expressed about the figures he employed – coal was certainly used for a number of industrial processes in the seventeenth century. These included lime burning, saltmaking, glassmaking and the preparation of alum (used in leather manufacture and as a mordant in dyeing). However, until the eighteenth century something like two-thirds of all production was for domestic consumption. Greater industrial use was hampered by the lack of an effective means of smelting ferrous metals with coal, and the prohibitive cost of transport. Not until Abraham Darby's discoveries began to be widely adopted in the mid-eighteenth century, and Henry Cort's innovations were introduced during the 1780s, did the problems of the iron industry recede. At the same time, canals solved the transport problems. Until the second half of the eighteenth century coal production was geared to small industries and local domestic consumption, except for areas such as Tyneside and west Cumberland where sea transport could be used.

Water transport was the key to a successful coal industry. Possibly half of all English output was transported by water in the eighteenth century.