People have been mining in Wales since before the Romans conquered the people. They took it to an industrial scale because they had to build their war machines and manage their large empire. They, like all the generations who followed them, abandoned those places when they no longer offered the resources the Romans wanted and needed. Those places, the empty catacombs and quarries of the Roman era, still exist like the ghosts of a long forgotten age. The skeletons of industry hundreds of years before Britain existed.

In the early half of the nineteenth century mining was what most people did. It put meager helpings of food on the tables of the poor and almost destitute while giving even smaller benefits to those who toiled and slaved only to die with coal-coated lungs. In 1831 the Merthyr Rising represented the discontent of the working-class as they rose against their employers. Dic Penderyn died as a martyr to that class and their cause in that Rising.

And the violence did not stop there. The Chartist Movement and the Newport Rising in 1839 forced the government hand to create the Factory Act of the 1830s and the Mines Act of 1842. But, like many laws created with the best of intentions in mind, these were ignored. Boys and men were sent to the mines to die while pulling in wealth for those who could never begin to comprehend what bought their silver and gold.

In this town, Cardiff, coal runs like lifeblood. Without coal there would be no point to the port, no point to the trade, no way to make a living except to pound rocks against the insufficient fish. Coal fuels the empire and coal gives life to the city.

Coal revitalized the capital and made it great again. It also revitalized the emptying coffers of the Crawley family. Lord Grantham, unlike many of his class, felt a kind of responsibility to those under his care that others did not. When his father made a mine that brought them a fortune his son used his fortune to bless the people.

He rebuilt the town, rebuilt the castle, and rebuilt the port. He sought fair treatment for his workers, compensation for the families of the dead, and safety for even the animals carting the coal from the pits of the earth. His generosity brought about a new life for those under his purview and changed the way many saw the world.

In a city booming toward industrialization, in an empire aiming to maintain its preeminence around the globe, and a family rising again to their golden age, the new gold was black.