Cambrian Colliery All Seams

The Story of Cambrian Colliery.

The Latin name for Wales was 'Cambria', hence the extension 'Cambrian' (properly pronounced as Cam-bree-an) for things Welsh, including 'Welshman'. Cambrian also refers to rock formations of 550-500 million years ago, making it an apt name for the colliery which once sat at the back of the Clydach Valley. Cambrian Colliery had four coal-producing shafts: Nos. 1 and 2, sunk 1872-74; No. 3, sinking completed June 1891; and No. 4, sinking completed by early 1914 at latest. No.2 pit closed in 1956 and No.3 in 1936. In exploiting the Pentre, 2ft. 9in, Six Feet, Red (Vein), Nine Feet, Bute, Yard and Five Feet seams (listed in geological order of descent) the colliery accumulated a massive workforce and this peaked at 4,898 in 1923, with 798 of those (more than the total workforce in some collieries!) being employed at the surface. Three explosions occurred there, one of steam in No. 2 pit's winding engine-house on November 11th, 1900 when four men were killed, and two of firedamp -- March 10th, 1905 in the Six Feet seam, and May 17th, 1965 in the Pentre seam - killing 33 and 31 men respectively.

At its peak Cambrian produced over one million tons of saleable coal per annum, extracted via the heading and stall, fully hand-won system of working --100% pick and shovel. This system yielded a low output per man-shift and was very wasteful, leaving a large quantity of roof-supporting pillars of coal in the workings. The coal was released from the face by a collier, lying on his side with mandrel in hand, perilously undercutting the seam at the bottom and propping its upper level as he advanced, hoping it did not collapse whilst he was under it. When he had sufficiently undercut the seam he carefully knocked out the props, thus bringing down large sections of the face. Usually, the fallen coal had to be reduced to lesser but still large sizes that could be lifted into the tram, but as the use of shovels was prohibited to prevent unwanted small coal entering, smaller lumps were gathered by hand, placed into and discharged from large steel scoops known as curling boxes. In low seams, the box was pushed ahead of or dragged behind the user for the duration of the coal-filling, a process which could last eight hours. This was merely one aspect of a punishing, soul-destroying method of work that caused early deaths, and engendered deformities of the body and premature aging of many colliers and their boys. Although those numbers are unknown they must be considered as many thousands, for in 1913, in Rhondda alone, almost ten million tons of coal was produced in this inefficient, torturous way. This method of work continued for the first fifty or sixty years or so of Cambrian's life, until the advent of conveyors; these were later augmented by the introduction of pneumatic picks and compressed air or electrically driven, seam undercutting machines, which in No. 1 pit were replaced in the late 1950s by sophisticated, mechanised systems. All of these systems employed the long-wall method of extraction, one which left no coal in its wake, and where, particularly on mechanised faces, the work was less arduous than the heading and stall method.

Cambrian's history cannot be recounted without mention of David Alfred Thomas. The son of Cambrian's co-founder Samuel Thomas, D.A. Thomas was a hard, much despised man, whose greed and desire to dominate would have a devastating effect on lives in mid-Rhondda. An enormously wealthy but mean and cold-hearted man, he had no interest in the welfare of his workers, an attitude confirmed by the absence in the Clydach Valley of any social institutions or facilities created at his behest, a lack of benevolence which starkly contrasted to the munificence of the respected coal-owner and philanthropist Archibald Hood at the nearby, and also mighty, Llwynypia Colliery. Thomas aspired to control South Wales' coal production and thereby regulate the price he paid the workforce to produce it. To enable this he established the Cambrian Combine, a group which controlled Cambrian, Llwynypia (after Hood's death), Naval, Ely, Nantgwyn and Britannic (Gilfach Goch) Collieries and attempted to force colliers at the small Ely colliery to sign a disadvantageous Bute seam price list, one unsigned at all the other collieries but which, if signed at Ely, would have applied to all, and netted the Combine many millions of pounds in extra profit. The proposed price-list contained no concessions for abnormal conditions of any kind; if the collier needed to fill six trams to earn a reasonable wage, but was restricted by the conditions to two, three or four, then the revenue from that number of trams would be deemed his contract earnings for that day, and would not attract any allowances! The Ely workmen refused to sign the price-list and the owners responded in August 1910 by locking the gates to the workforce, setting in motion circumstances which culminated in the South Wales Miners Federation declaring an official strike from November 1st 1910. It is recorded that the next ten months were a bloody and brutal period in Rhondda's history, with one miner killed by 'blows to the head with a blunt instrument'. Eventually the physical actions of the strikers at the six collieries were quelled, their aggression reduced to a simmering resentment in the face of an overpowering presence of 1500 imported police and six regiments of soldiers. In September 1911, despite their fortitude and courage, the dire circumstances in which they and their families existed compelled a return to work. After ten months opposition it was a bitter eating of the leek, but their struggles had not been completely in vain, for even amongst Britain's establishment society there were those with uneasy consciences, they who realised that no man would put his family through such degradation without just cause. This consensus gathered pace and resulted in the 1912 enactment of a law that gave the workmen guarantee of a minimum daily wage. In their massively prominent contribution to the establishment of that right the men of Cambrian, Llwynypia, Naval, Nantgwyn, Ely and Britannic created a legend that exists to this day; in defeat they and their families had exhibited unparalleled courage and unquenchable spirit, qualities which Rhondda miners were once more forced to display in the fight against the Thatcher administration almost seventy years later. By their very nature, collieries were crucibles of socialism, and from Llwynypia Colliery in 1910 sprang two leaders in 31 years old Will John and 28 years old John Hopla. Leaders of the Combine Workmen's Committee during the strike, they were impatient with William 'Mabon' Abraham, President of the South Wales Miners Federation, whom they viewed as placatory, and too close to the coal-owners. Perhaps singled out as examples, John and Hopla (the latter died in 1914) were each punished with a jail sentence of one year for their parts in 'unlawful assembly and rioting' at Ely Colliery in 1911. In 1920 Will John entered Parliament as MP. for Rhondda West, and was followed in 1933 by Cambrian workman and Workmen's Committee delegate Will Mainwaring who represented Rhondda East. As a 27 years old in 1911, Mainwaring had also brushed with the police, fighting alongside other miners in Tonypandy street skirmishes. All three were men without agendas, each impelled from within to fight the injustice of an iniquitous system under which colliers and boys were compelled to risk their lives and health for a pittance, a degrading process that stripped them of dignity. John, Hopla, Mainwaring -- they were inspirational, giants of their time, and men of unequalled conviction whose names quickly entered folklore, ones remembered in Rhondda over a century later.

The passing of that century has also allowed the truth to be known about the Bute seam and its contentious price-list. The writer, and others from a small, dwindling band who worked in the Bute until its 1964 abandonment at Cambrian, remember it as a dangerous, often geologically disturbed seam that was overlain by a measure of solid rock many yards in thickness. Between the bottom of the solid rock and the top of the Bute seam there existed a consolidated layer of mud and clay known as shale, which when disturbed as the coal was worked, exhibited its friable nature. This caused the collier to spend much time packing roof cavities with pieces of timber, preventing the crumbly shale losing contact with the upper rock layer. If not supported, that layer would inevitably converge and collapse, sometimes spectacularly so, making a complete coal-face inaccessible. Such dangers often caused a fireman or over-man to instruct the collier to stand 'notched timber'; this was the best system of conventional roof support and involved the use of timber 'arms' and 'collars' of circular cross-section, all notched by hatchet in Welsh style, interlocked when erected. They were more substantial and durable, but more time-consuming in preparation and erection than the arrangement of two un-notched timber arms (posts), merely placed under a horizontal wooden prop ('flat') of semi-circular cross-section. Nevertheless, even the notched arrangement, set on a solid rock floor, could prove fallible to the enormous roof pressure of the converging rock when the crumbling shale 'melted' -- disintegrated -- above the roof props.

When it was attempted to work the Bute with a reduced seam height it was incredible to see arms, notched or un-notched driven through its false floor, an eight inch thick bed of rock, a mudstone also known as 'bunker' or 'clod'. Such irresistible pressure ('squeeze'), exerted over the collier's entire workplace prevented the normal separation of coal from the face. Many millions of tons of Bute coal were produced in Rhondda but even with the benefits of a pneumatic pick and a conveyor, when a combination of the above negatives occurred, it was often impossible for a collier to fill his quota - confirmation of the contentions by heading and stall colliers at Ely Colliery in 1910-11, who worked it without mechanical advantages! It is also worthy of mention that at Cambrian the brief mechanisation of one Bute district proved to be totally impractical because of its overall treacherous nature, underlining the fact that man was the most versatile coal-winning machine ever employed underground.

Cambrian closed on September 24th, 1966. It was then working the hugely unprofitable Lower Nine Feet / Bute seam in No.4 pit, and the limited reserves of the thin, thirty-four inches thick Pentre seam in No.1. In its last full financial year of 1965-66, with a manpower of 781 men (inc. surface workers) it produced 187,600 saleable tons, at a loss of £1.90 per ton - £356,000 in total. Many years of unprofitability had preceded that deficit and with the once bounteous reserves of its 2,000 acres area of extraction completely exhausted, the colliery had arrived at the end of its life. Its demolition, and the subsequent landscaping of the site, has obliterated every aspect of a workplace that entered the souls of those who worked there, a unique place whose disappearance has left a muted community and silent valley. Only those who remember it during its industrial period will know how great the contrast is. Bill Richards. © 2015.

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