Horses were used in mines until the end of the twentieth century. In deep mines, they would spend most of their short lives without seeing the light of day. Many were killed due to explosion and accidents, as an example of this, the remains of nine horses are still buried at Glyn Pits after the disastrous underground fire of January 1890. The picture above illustrates the result of what appears to be an underground explosion, the horse has been killed and the trams piled in disarray. Although there were cases of abuse, in most cases, horses were very well cared for. In this context, it should be borne in mined that horses were worth more to the early mine owners than the men using them, and therefore would have been more expensive to replace. Even so this must have been a miserable existence for them.
In 1931 there were 73,024 horses in British deep and shallow mines but were reduced to 32,109 by 1937 with the increase of machine power. Even though mechanical rope haulage engines were replacing horses, the coal still had to be removed from the coal face to the mechanical haulage, so for many years to come the horse played a large part in coal mining.
Below in this 1912 photograph the horses can be seen at rest in the underground stables.
