Requiem for an industry

This was just about the first nick-nack that Mrs Talpa and I bought when we set up home. As I remember we bought it from Exchange and Mart the printed pregenitor of Ebay. It is, of course, a miner's safety lamp from Gateshead on Tyne in the North East of England. The mines in the Durham coal field were being closed down at the time; a few days ago deep coal mining in Britain came to a final end when the Big K mine in Yorkshire was closed and its shaft sealed.
There is a tenuous link with Christmas in that the lamp always reminds me of William Holman Hunt's painting The Light of the World.