Safety first: Visitors learn the secrets of the miners' lamps
Ninety metres underground, Martyn Jones, a former miner in the South Wales coal industry, peppers his history of Big Pit with sardonic wit as he describes the extremely hazardous work that was done there.
A sense of humour, it seems, was a good attribute to have if you were a miner. And firm bonds developed among the men who spent their days at close quarters by the coalface, where the camaraderie was an element of survival.
Some of the stories are rather shocking: in the days when horses pulled coal underground, they were only brought out to pasture on the surface once a year. Sometimes the excitement was so great that the animals had to be sedated. And there were accidents. In 1908, three men were killed in an explosion. Four-and-a-half years later, three men lost their lives in a fire at Big Pit. That was the same year as the UK’s worst mining accident, the Senghenydd Colliery disaster, near Caerphilly, which killed 439 miners and one rescuer.
Today, visitors to Big Pit must wear safety gear and surrender mobile phones at the entrance as batteries could spark an explosion.
The Blaenafon area had all the resources needed to make iron. Coal had been dug on a small scale from medieval times. The district was mostly farmland until the ironworks was set up. Everything was to hand: ironstone, coal, limestone, and water for power. The first three furnaces, built by 1789, created for a time the largest and most modern ironworks in the UK.The site has some of the oldest large-scale industrial coalmining developments in South Wales.
The Coity pit was driven in 1840, and was the traditional circular single tramway, 3.7m across. A new main shaft, which became known as Big Pit, was sunk in 1860, and was elliptical in shape. At 5.5m by 4m, it was the first shaft in Wales large enough to raise two coal carriers side-by-side. It became the coal-winding shaft, while the older Coity excavation was used for upcast air ventilation.
Big Pit was one of 34 shafts feeding Blaenafon ironworks. Later it supplied coal for railways in Britain, France and South America. In 1878, the main shaft was deepened to 89m. By 1923, at the mine’s peak, almost 1,400 men were employed. On nationalisation in 1947, the National Coal Board took over the mine, which by then employed 789.
By 1970 the workforce only numbered 494, as operations had focused solely on the Garw seam, with a maximum thickness of only 760mm. The board agreed the development of a drift mine, which meant that by 1973 windings at Big Pit had ceased, with coal being extracted close to the refurbished Black Lion coal washery.
When work stopped at the coalface in November 1979, the Garw had thinned to half an arm in height. The Big Pit shaft was used just for emergency extraction until it finally closed on 2 February 1980.
5 things to see
1. Underground tour: Prepare to be lowered 90m down the mineshaft for a captivating journey around a section of original workings.
2. Pithead baths: The building houses exhibitions on children in the mines, health, home life and mining communities.
3. Winding engine: Inspect the machine that raised and lowered the cages carrying coal and men up and down the shaft.
4. Explosives magazine: Sited away from other buildings in case of accidents.
5. Blacksmiths’ yard: Contains the fitting and welding shop which is still in use today.
Winding gear: Visitors can travel deep underground from the pithead
Striking images
Until 1 July, visitors to Big Pit can see an exhibition of photographs taken during the miners’ strike of 1984-85. National Union of Mineworkers member Mike Thompson travelled around England and Wales taking photos during the strike. The exhibition gives a personal and powerful view from the union’s side of the picket lines.
Ben Hargreaves
» The Big Pit National Coal Museum is open daily, with underground tours from 10am to 3.30pm. See the website www.museumwales.ac.uk/bigpit