The Thoresby Colliery closed down on Friday, the Hatfield colliery closure looms and the Kellingley mine is scheduled to wind up a week before Christmas.

Last week UK Coal said 360 employees would be made redundant by the end of the Nottinghamshire-based Thoresby mine on Friday.

The downturn-hit coal company also said the Yorkshire-based Kellingley longwall mine would close on December 15.

However, 200 redundancies will be made at Kellingley before the end of this month while about 500 staff will remain until the mine closes in December.

According to Bloomberg, UK Coal said the decisions to close the Thoresby and Kellingley mines followed “a long period of difficult trading conditions, largely due to low international coal prices and geological issues at both mines”

In late June the Prospect union announced that the Hatfield underground coal mine would close soon with 500 job losses expected.

The closure of the mine was previously expected 14 months later.

The UK government has been blamed.

“Hatfield has been unable to sell its coal because of the government's refusal to sponsor coal contracts with generators and the doubling of the UK's carbon tax," Prospect negotiator Mike Macdonald said according to Reuters at the time.

Taken over in 2013 by the Hatfield Colliery Partnership which was run by a group of employees, the mine has faced production difficulties and low prices since.

Kellingley is consequently on track to be the last of UK’s underground coal mines and its closure in late 2015 signals the end of an era.

The basic concepts of longwall mining were initially developed in England from the late 17th century although it obviously took off with the introduction of mechanised technology in the 20th century.