Looking over Blaenavon from Big Pit Colliery
Time for another mega-thread I think, this time focusing on disused coal mines in South Wales, as well as a few other bonus related bits of industry. I'm going to try to keep it a bit less text-heavy as I have a tendancy to type loads and it takes ages! There's a lot of images to share. The article is based around the findings of three trips. The first took place in September 2020 which ended up with me exploring Cwm coke works, a truly epic place. I decided to return to Wales with a friend in August 2021 whilst looking for a cheap exploring trip destination, and I was intruiged by the abandoned industry in an area still in many places undergoing decline and not yet redeveloped - a contrast to the south of England where many of its brownfield land has been redeveloped over the past decade. After our initial long weekend of exploring, I soon found there was much I had missed so we returned again several months later. Here is the result of these trips, but this is by no means an extensive list and I'm sure there's plenty more to see.
Here's a brief outline of the background to Wales' collieries if you don't already know, although it's a pretty widely known story and I'll keep it as apolitical as possible. South Wales, like other parts of the UK, sits upon a naturally-occurring underground 'coal field'; an area of geology where coal occurs. People started to realise coal could be used as fuel, and first efforts to harvest the black stuff began with rudimentary local efforts to lower brave individuals into shafts via something like a wicker basket down to the coal level. Eventually, the economic potential began to be capitalised on and formalised collieries started cropping up all over the place by the mid-1800s. Towns began to grow around the collieries as they boosted the area's economy and exported coal far and wide, fuelling the nation and peaking in the early 1900s. As it grew, the industry became more heavily regulated as accidents and push-back from workers became apparent. In 1947, the National Coal Board was formed as the Government decided to nationalise the industry and bring what was a very varied industry by numerous private companies large and small under one roof. Following increasing pressure from the Government under Thatcher upon the industry, the UK Miner's Strike was launched by Scargill's National Union of Mineworkers in 1984-85 to protest the oncoming closure of the collieries. It was a loss and in 1985, the Government would have their way and weaken trade unions, and the closure of the collieries began. The reduced industry was privatised in 1994, and towns had began to decline along with the collieries which once supported them. It was clear that many towns were still suffering upon my visits, exacerbated further by the economic effects of Covid-19. Whilst coal mining is not illegal in the UK and has prevailed in a very small way, it comes under heavy fire for its environmental impact. Strangely though, in 2022, the Government approved a new mine to open in Cumbria. The remains of the collieries are the ruins of this once prosperous civilisation which came to define twentieth-century Britain, and tell the story of its sharp rise and fall.
Big Pit Colliery, Blaenavon
So this is cheating a bit. It's a museum now and an excellent place to start. A lot of the infrastructure still survives and they even take you down into the coal mine itself for free. This was a very cool experience but sadly due to risk of sparks I couldn't take any images underground. This coal mine ran for 100 years from 1880 to 1980, and was first opened to the public in 1983. The pit head baths were added in 1939 as efforts towards hygiene increased, saving the miners from going home covered from head to toe.
Other bits
This mug will have later significance
Llanhillieth Colliery Pit Head Baths
So now we've got the museum out the way, we can compare against an abandoned example of a colliery bath house. I did a report on this already a while ago so I suggest checking it out here for more information and pictures. These were built at a similar time to Big Pit in 1941. We were a bit hungover and hadn't seen this done online before, so it was a gamble taking the effort of blatantly climbing in on a public road. However, it paid off and I was pleased with the inside even if it's in a bad way.
Lockers & showers removed
Hafodyrynys Colliery Washery
So we've looked at pit head baths, now we're going to look at another twentieth-century feature which was often added to collieries. These enormous concrete structures were washeries designed to rinse slurry and extract coal dust to remove impurities, a modern technique which was more common post-WW2. The washery here was built around 1959 and now stands near farmland on its own in an unsuspecting rural area. The mine infrastructure was apparently covered over with chicken manure to revert it to grassland. It was chucking it down with rain so I had to wipe my camera lens, take the shot, then wipe it again. Not much to see beyond being extremely photogenic.
1975 image from Gordon Edgar on Flickr
Here is a summary from this website which goes into its' modernist architectural design:
The new colliery buildings and washery were designed with modern buildings and equipment for maximum efficiency. Architecturally, they were influenced by the functionalism of pre-war collieries in Germany designed by the Bauhaus architect Peter Behrens, by the sinuous forms of the Festival of Britain, and possibly by the nearby Brynmawr Rubber Factory. All the buildings had reinforced concrete frames filled with brick or glass panels and flat, curved or waveform concrete roofs. Washery plants were key elements in post-war efficiency improvements, as only half of British coal output was being washed in 1945. The washery at Hafodyrynys contained equipment for extracting coal dust from slurry and drying the remaining waste before tipping: processes that were rare before the 1950s. It was built entirely of reinforced concrete with continuous glazed panels.
Blaenserchan Colliery Washery
This washery is of a slightly more conventional design but no less impressive. It was absolutely huge and we viewed it from a hilltop path. This washery was older and apparently built in 1925 for Llanerch colliery adjacent, and later used until arund 1962 by the Blaenserchan colliery which closed in 1985. The washery was a long way from us but I grabbed a good shot on my telephoto lens as it looked a pain to reach on foot and we didn't have all day. Along the path was a memorial to a disaster which happened at Llanerch colliery in 1890, involving a gas explosion and collapse. It resulted in the deaths of 176 men as well as boys, pretty horrible to think what happened to them in their final days or if they survived trapped inside the mine.
Someone left some actual miners boots there. It's worth saying I did these explores in a pair of DMS Army boots much like this.
People said I was mad for buying them to explore in but they worked 100 years ago so why not now.
TBC...
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, great report, thank you 
