RICHARD FOSTER took his three children 140 metres down a West Yorkshire coal mine to learn about an era in Britain when Old King Coal reigned supreme.

COAL not dole was the cry when radical trade unionist Arthur Scargill led the miners out on strike in 1984. Now, 17 years later, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers is reduced to trying to wrestle Hartlepool from disgraced former Labour Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson in the General Election. Meanwhile, only a few thousand British miners work a handful of collieries - the rump of a once proud industry that powered the Industrial Revolution.

My children - Sophie, Daniel and Rachel - were not even born when Scargill failed to halt the Tory government's pit closure programme, but they were able to get a flavour of life underground - thanks to the National Coal Mining Museum at Overton, near Wakefield, which opened in 1988.

Our guide spoke with the quiet authority of a man who had spent ten years as a coalface electrician.

As we entered the lamp room to be issued with our pit helmets and lamps we were told to hand in any "contraband" to ensure the safety of our party 140 metres underground. This included cigarettes and lighters plus any items powered by batteries such as watches, cameras and mobile phones. Any spark underground could cause an explosion, warned our guide.

On entering the cage the banksman gave each of us a metal disc that we would have to return to him at the end of our visit... to ensure none of the party were left underground.

We then descended 140 metres to the pit bottom and entered roadways hewn out of the rock more than 100 years ago, which were last used for coal production in 1974.

Our guide showed us the surface drift - a 600-metre walk out of the mine up a steep one-in-four slope - and told us a second way out was made compulsory for all coal mines after the Hartley disaster in 1862, when 204 men were entombed when the only shaft was blocked.

We saw a model of a woman pulling a tub full of coal along a tunnel while a child aged about six worked as a trapper, opening and shutting air doors to allow air to circulate along the roadways. Whole families used to mine coal until a law was passed in 1842 banning women and children under ten from working underground.

We passed underground stables for pit ponies and saw a model of a miner on his knees shovelling coal into a tub. In thinner coal seams (46 to 61cm thick) miners would have to hack out coal with a pickaxe while lying on their sides.

Machines were brought into collieries from the 1920s to dig new roadways, "slice" coal from the coalface and get the coal to the surface on a system of conveyor belts.

With all this machinery modern pits are noisy, dusty places and, even with all the safety regulations, mining remains hard and dangerous work.

Yet the esprit de corps of men working together in harsh conditions makes former miners pine for the pithead. Our guide said many former miners visited the museum saying they would love to go back to mining because they missed it so much.

Life for Britain's miners may have been hard, brutal and, in too many cases, short. But honest sweat and toil has a certain dignity about it that you do not get in an air-conditioned call centre - the new sweatshop of the 21st century.

There is plenty to see above ground at Caphouse Colliery with retired pit ponies, machinery displays, a steam winder, pithead baths and a 17-acre rural site complete with nature trail and adventure playground plus picnic areas.

There is also a modern visitor centre with displays, a caf and shop. And visitors can get a taste of life in a miner's cottage in 1949 - thanks to a living history lesson given by 'Mrs Lockwood , an actress portraying a miner's wife from the Forties. Very entertaining.

Fact file

Opening times: Daily from 10am to 5pm except December 24, 25, 26 and January 1.

Admission: £5.75 for adults with children and over-60s free. The Mines and Quarries Inspectorate has ruled that children under the age of five are not allowed underground. Allow three to four hours for your visit.

Getting there: The museum is on the A642 about halfway between Wakefield and Huddersfield near junction 40 of the M1.