Llwynypia Colliery 7ft Seam

LLWYNYPIA COLLIERY, LLWYNYPIA, RHONDDA.

Any recollection of this colliery and its workforce is inseparable from the name of Archibald Hood, a Scotsman who bestrode mid-Rhondda and elsewhere as a colossus of the mining world, and beyond that distinction too. A brief summary of this man’s career –where to do justice, a volume is needed – is that in 1860, when he arrived in Wales from Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, he was merely thirty-seven, but in a brief twenty-five of those years in Scotland, he achieved more than most men of that time would achieve in a lifetime, becoming a qualified mining engineer and coal-owner, genuinely highly-respected in both spheres by his mining peers and workforce. His interest and concern in the latter extended beyond their daily duties, with the provision of good accommodation complete with gardens for food production, and also encouraging their purchase of domestic needs from co-operative initiatives. But, as illustrious as he was in Scotland, he would, over the next forty-two years in Wales, carve a second career that would overtake his first.

Hood’s first Welsh mining involvement was at Tylcha Fach Level in Coed Ely, which exploited the thin bituminous Ty Du seam of less than a yard thickness. The colliery was owned by the Ely Valley Coal Company, and its office and winding-engine house are still in existence, modified into three residences, sitting above Tylcha Fach Estate, an elevated, relatively-new housing development which sits on the valley-side opposite the former Coedely Colliery. He had arrived there in 1860, commissioned by Messrs. Campbell and Mitchell-Innes to determine if a proposed investment in small mines in the area would be profitable, but in an interim period and inexplicably not seeking Hood’s advice, Campbell and Mitchell-Innes were persuaded, unwisely, to buy the level. Although Hood later joined them there, his thoughts were focussed on deep mining at Llwynypia, and when the Ely Valley Coal Company was liquidated, he, Campbell and Mitchell-Inness formed the new Glamorgan Coal Company and began shaft sinkings at Llwynypia Colliery. Eventually, under Hood’s leadership two more deep mines were established at Penrhiwfer and Gilfach Goch.

Evidence of the beginning of Llwynypia Colliery, dated February 27th,1861, is shown on page four (pages 1-3 missing) of Glamorgan Coal Company’s Cash Book, which over the following twenty-eight days showed directors’ cash injections of £3,600, including £300 by Archibald Hood. It provides early-years evidence that though Hood was undoubtedly the driving force at Llwynypia, his periodical purchase of company shares was always much less than his fellow directors! A search for this colliery through officially-recognised sources will be unsuccessful if ‘Glamorgan’ or ‘Scotch’ is used as a search-word, for the correct name is ‘Llwynypia’, which broadly translates as ‘Magpies Grove’. However, for good reason, ‘Glamorgan’ and ‘Scotch’ soon became every-day alternatives, and they are unquestioned and accepted to this day – but why did they originate? Imagine, you are a Scot, beginning work as a miner in a very sparsely populated area, where the native language is predominantly Welsh, a tongue completely foreign to you. Inevitably, at some time, you will be asked your place of residence or employment: do you invite ridicule, by attempting to pronounce ‘Llwynypia’, or do you use your wits, replying with the easily-pronounced ‘Scotch’, a reference to the colliery’s predominantly Scottish workforce imported by Archibald Hood – or the equally easy ‘Glamorgan’, the name of the company owning the colliery?

To accommodate his workforce, Hood found it necessary to build, and eventually, 271 homes were constructed in fifteen terraces adjacent to, and overlooking the colliery, of which 256 are still in occupied existence, together with several impressive managers’ residences built in the proximity of the colliery. More dwellings were built near his Penrhiwfer and Gilfach Goch mines, and to this day, in all three villages, there remain references to the Glamorgan Coal Company, Hood’s nationality, and Scottish landmarks. Sherwood (several), Gilmour, Anderson, Thistle, St. Andrew, Ayton, Campbell, Argyll, Grange, Holyrood, Rosedale, Bruce (Penrhiwfer), Scotch and Dundonnell (both at Gilfach Goch), all are overtly Scottish-influenced place-names, but there were acknowledgements to Wales, with Cambrian, Glamorgan, Llewelyn, Glandwr, Llwynypia, Glyncornel, Iscoed, etc. Missing from all these is a landmark dubbed ‘Hood’ by Hood himself, and perhaps this remarkable, extraordinary man knew there was no need for self-acclaim, for in his modest way he probably realized that his achievements in South Wales would render that self-perpetuation superfluous.

There were six vertical shafts and two levels at Llwynypia. On the Llwynypia side of the River Rhondda Fawr were shafts 1, 2, 3 and 4. Nos 1, and 2 shafts were sunk to exploit the shallow Nos. 2 and 3 Rhondda seams but were eventually deepened to exploit the steam coals in the deeper seams; No. 3 shaft worked the shallow seams too, but, whilst reportedly sunk to also exploit the lower seams, it closed in 1908. The coal in the Nos. 2 and 3 Rhondda seams was bituminous, used as a domestic fuel and also as the basic element in coke production, fuelling the 281 ovens at Llwynypia and Gilfach Goch collieries, where an impressive 1,400 tons was produced weekly. Additionally important, at the floor of these seams was fireclay, a mineral consisting of the roots of dead plants, extracted along with the coal, the decayed vegetation above the plant-roots, both having undergone change, metamorphosis, through heat and deep burial over millions of years. This clay was a valuable by-product, an essential constituent of the 10,000 or so bricks made daily by women in the colliery’s above-ground brick-making plant.

The three shafts (1, 2 and 3) were sunk in a line, parallel to and near the Taff Vale Railway, their extremes contained within an incredible 35.33 yards. No. 4 shaft did not conduct minerals, it was sunk purely to accommodate water pumped from the whole of the colliery’s workings, and its former location is today bordered by a fast-food outlet adjacent to Llwynypia Road. When the colliery ceased production in 1945, the yard remained in use as a rescue-station and central workshop, and the shaft remained open at the No. 3 Rhondda seam, 108 yards level, for water-pumping only until 1966, when total colliery closure took place. The writer recalls, during the mid-1960s, many times travelling to his ventilation duties there, in a very small, single-deck cage, the only one that could be accommodated in this extremely narrow shaft. No. 5 shaft, on the Trealaw side of the river, did not conduct minerals, it was sunk purely to conduct the whole of the colliery’s stale air to the surface, but at times through the colliery’s life this function was fulfilled by other shafts, including No. 6, when No. 5 closed. No. 6 shaft, close to the Collier’s Arms at Ynyscynon Road, was sunk to exploit the deep, steam coals.

In descending order, the seams worked at Llwynypia Colliery were: No. 1 Rhondda (only at an inconsequential, almost mountaintop level, see below); No. 2 Rhondda; No. 3 Rhondda; Pentre; Two Feet Nine Inches; Lower Six Feet; Upper Nine Feet (Red Vein): Lower Nine Feet and Bute; Bute; Five Feet; Lower Five Feet. The Lower Five Feet was the deepest-worked seam and was found at 517 yards in the 525 yards deep No. 1 shaft. The two levels were established on the Trealaw side of the river, with the highly-productive Sherwood Level, whose entrance was adjacent to No. 5 shaft, shallowly traversing under Ynyscynon Nursery as it commenced its 950 yard journey into Rhondda Fach, extracting the No. 2 Rhondda seam. It was opened in 1905, in anticipation of the closure of No. 3 shaft, thereby maintaining the essential supply of bituminous coal and fireclay for the production of coke and bricks, but it closed in 1923 when those reserves were exhausted. That year also saw the closure of Llwynypia Colliery Mountain Level, situated high on the Trealaw mountainside; it was a largely-exploratory, short-lived venture into the No. 1 Rhondda seam for its much-sought bituminous coal and fireclay, but one which was of limited presence due to glacial action and erosion by the elements. Reliable and complete manpower and production figures for Llwynypia are not available, but the colliery was certainly prolific in both, with 4,200 employees in 1902, and 700,000 tons output in 1923 being quoted, although the latter figure, is much lower than the widely-held figure of one million tons per annum.

Archibald Hood was that rarity, a truly-respected coal-owner. He was canny and conservative but also a humanitarian, and at Llwynypia, as in Scotland, he sought to beneficially influence the lives of his workmen and their families. Whereas D. A Thomas, Chairman of Cambrian Collieries Ltd, injected nothing into the Clydach Valley communities, Hood’s hand was everywhere in Llwynypia, manifested by the provision of schools, St. Andrews Church, a Miners Institute, complete with library and billiards tables — a swimming pool, tennis courts, cricket, football and rugby fields, and even the winter-time provision of a large, outdoor ice-skating area! He encouraged his workforce to grow food by providing large garden areas at the fronts of their dwellings, simultaneously seeking to divert the male occupants from alcohol, an imperative, given the volatile temperaments of the Welsh, Scots, and the Irish that later inhabited the community! He was known for his attention to detail, often involved in matters which his minions might have been expected to supervise – the writer’s grandmother lost an arm at Llwynypia when sixteen in 1893, amputated when caught in brick-making machinery, and Hood, then seventy, personally attended the matter, obtaining a job for the one-armed girl at the Tonypandy ironmongery of John Cox – Hood, probably not needing to remind Cox of Glamorgan Coal Company’s patronage!

When he died, aged 79, in 1902, a fund was established to erect a statue, the first in Rhondda, and this likeness, with an arm horizontal, pointing to his colliery, stands to this day, overlooking Llwynypia Road. Such was the respect of his workmen that the fund was heavily over-subscribed, with the surplus being used to provide a gas-lit statue and animal drinking-trough, now modified and situated near Tonypandy Library, removed from its original site at Tonypandy Square. Six years after his death, Llwynypia Colliery was taken under the control of D. A. Thomas’s Cambrian Collieries Ltd, of whom Leonard Llewelyn was General Manager. Today, it is known that Llewelyn was a liar, impostor and opportunist, but when he and Llwynypia Colliery became newspaper headlines in the Tonypandy Coal Strike and the associated rioting of 1910-11, he excelled in concealing and distorting the truth, by manipulating Establishment-based newspapers, the only information source of those times. To expose Llewelyn, one needed mining experience and a source of publication, both possessed by, and available to the writer, but not so in the latter-essential to miners in the 1910-11 period. So, critically, the untruths in those newspapers passed unchallenged, and became immediate history, creating false perceptions of events that deceived many historians and others to the present day. Llewelyn’s lies would not have sat well with Hood, and one wonders, when at the peak of his powers, would he have vetoed the Cambrian purchase of Llwynypia? Had it been possible to configure that time-span, he might have prevented the immense suffering that occurred in mid-Rhondda in 1910-11.

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