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The reason for making this website is because of the rapid demise of the coal industry. Very soon there will be little left to show our children, so what we have done is to take a local coal mine, which, even though it is very old, is fortunately fairly intact, and which is now classified as a Monument of National Importance. Here we have tried to explain a brief history of the origins of coal and the early ways of mining it. One is able to appreciate the skill of the builders of these pit heads, and the men who worked these mines in the mid 19th and early part of the 20th century. We can use our imagination, and visualise what it would have been like to have been involved here at Glyn Pits almost 160 years ago, when it was first being sunk, and to hear those old engines working away. One should also try to imagine seeing women working on site-along with their children - from the ages of 7 years, from the sheer necessity of keeping bread on the table, as well as helping to keep the families solvent. Believe it or not, the few pennies earned by the children made the difference between survival and the workhouse. You will also read about the mining disasters which shook the British coal fields, and what was causing them.
South Wales in 1912.
One can see the way miners arrived for work and note that they carried tin drinking containers (jacks) along with food containers (snap boxes) with each miner also carrying an oil lamp which would have been used for some lighting and for the testing for gas.
By now, most people are aware of the way our miners were treated throughout history, even to the confrontation with the government in 1984, who deemed it necessary to take the industry and almost completely destroy it, leaving British miners on the dole, while at the same time having to import coal. The government entered the bloody year long confrontation with the miners, led by their leader Arthur Scargill. He protested that there was a hit list for mine closures. The government led by prime minister Mrs. Thatcher denied emphatically that any such list existed, yet by 1988 there was little to remind us that we ever had a coal mining industry at all. This has left the miners believing that the government had lied, a fact which they consider to be unarguable! Today the cause goes on for the men maimed with dust diseases, who are even now-in the year 2003- still having to fight for compensation from the legal department of this - many people consider unjust - industry. There have been a few cases of men being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation, but it seems most miners will get far less than this, with the figure given being somewhere between £1,500 and £20,000,this derisory amount for some men being dependant on an oxygen cylinder - and, equally importantly, someone to replace it - for most of their days, this after a lifetime working in dangerous and deplorable conditions, which most people today would shudder to think about, let alone work in.
We would be grateful for any information or the loan of any photographs which could enhance the history for both this website and the site of Pontypool Glyn Pits.
Available now!!
The Iron Heart of Gwent
Newly Published
This book relates to the early iron and coal industry, mainly from when the town founders (The Hanbury family) who in the mid 1500s set up in and around Pontypool establishments, which along with the ingenuity of the Pontypool people was to see the invention of machinery and processes, that helped revolutionise the making and refining of Iron. The book also gives an insight into the industrial revolution, which saw the great engines that used steam for power. Housing and social problems arose with people, who had come in their thousands to this area to hopefully find a better way of life, but in many cases their hopes and dreams were turned to ashes by a struggle for existence against oppression and greed by people who should have known better.
Available now at Pontypool Market and Museum
and on Ebay @ £9.99 + post and package
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