Cannel coal

[3] It comes from resins, spores, waxes, and cutaneous and corky materials of terrestrial vascular plants, in part from Lycopsid (scale tree).

[4][6] Cannel coal was accumulated in ponds and shallow lakes in peat-forming swamps and bogs of the Carboniferous age under oxygen-deficient conditions.

[7] In England a member of the Bradshaigh family discovered a plentiful shallow seam of smooth, hard, cannel coal on his estate, in Haigh, Lancashire in the 16th century.

It could be worked and carved, and was prized for fireplaces as an excellent fuel that burned with a bright flame, was easily lit, and left virtually no ash.

On October 17, 1850, James Young, of Glasgow, Scotland, patented a method for the extraction of paraffin (kerosene) from torbanite, a very pure cannel coal.

[12] In June 1857, a large gathering to celebrate the laying of a foundation stone of a pedestal on which to raise the retired Locomotion No 1 outside the Stockton and Darlington Railway Station (now North Road Station and Darlington Railway Museum - Head of Steam) witnessed that inside a special cavity in the pedestal were laid many items as a time capsule, and a cannel coal box made by a driver of the locomotive, Robert Murray, as a tribute to Edward Pease (often known as the "Father of the Railways").