Inside the old Tower Colliery
Thousands of men once mined the valley’s coal here... but take a look at it now:
RIGHT at the head of the Cynon Valley, past Llwydcoed and Hirwaun and with stunning views out over the Brecon Beacons, lies what was the last deep pit mine in South Wales – Tower Colliery.
But while the general site may still appear familiar, with the winding tower watching over a collection of buildings including the reception and shower block, the interiors of these buildings have not been touched for years and, after extensive damage by vandalism, are shadows of their former selves.
This was the site where hundreds of men would arrive each day ready for work from their homes in Aberdare or nearby Rhigos, to pick up their lights and head down the pit for a gruelling 12-hour shift.
This colliery has a fascinating story and it comes as no surprise there were once plans to make a film about it.
Established in 1864, Tower became an area of intense industrial activity including ironstone and coal mining for over a century.
In 1994, the pit was shut as an “unviable” one as coal was regarded as too expensive to extract.
But a huge workers’ buyout, led by committee chairman and miners’ hero Tyrone O’Sullivan, meant the pit reopened the next year after being taken on by the 239 redundant staff, each pooling £8,000 to buy it.
The pit then posted triumphant first-year profits of £4m, extending its life by over a decade.
Coal sadly ran out and Tower closed again in January 2008, but a smaller opencast mining operation soon began at another site next to the former pit, starting in 2012.
That process has now come to an end, and the opencast mining, with around 120 staff, will soon also be closed.
Now Tower officials are hoping to turn the 253-hectare brownfield site containing tips, a disused coal washery and other facilities into something practical for the modern day, and for the use of the community.
Tony Shott knows Tower better than most.
Tony, 66, began work as an apprentice surveyor at Tower in 1969, but left in the mid 1980s to pursue a degree in geology.
Now general manager of both the opencast and former deep mining site, father-of-three Tony later joined the buyout in 1994 and has been involved ever since. He took us on a tour of some of the site’s buildings, many disused since 2010.
The reception building contains what was once the boardroom and pay-room among others, and memories and documents are scattered across the floor everywhere you look. The old lamp room hatch lies off the main corridor, where lights would have been given out and collected from workers before and after their shifts.
Tony explained: “There were 1,000 people working here and we had to give one in 13 a lamp. That’s what the canopies are for that go all around the building – to cover workers queuing for lamps from the rain. Coming up out of the mines they would do exactly the opposite.”
Further along the corridor is the former boardroom and pay-room. The former is still clad with what was probably once an executive-looking table and picture of Mr O’Sullivan and an old map, as well as documents all over the floor – one on top of the piles is a statement of shifts worked, dated 1948.
Across the corridor, the pay-room contains a window where workers collected their wages each Friday.
In the control room, the centre of the reception building, more wires and rock wool litter the floor along with communications devices and conveyors. The room would have been fully air conditioned, according to Tony.
Then, stepping into the shower block really does feel like going back in time.
Past the huge boiler visible on the exterior of the building, on the ground floor sits the former office of none other than Mr O’Sullivan. But the room is now ankle deep with books, debris and more broken glass, with its windows completely smashed to pieces.
Following the workers’ buyout, this would have
been the centre of operation for keeping the whole place alive until 2008, where decisions about staff and financial deliberations would have taken place.
Upstairs, and past the long trough-shaped boot cleaner, is the large shower block which, much like the lamp room and the pay room, worked in a conveyor belt format.
Tony explained: “We’d go into the dirty locker room, through into the showers and then out into the clean locker room area.
“We used to line up to wash each other’s backs. It was a hell of a job getting all of it off you. You would need to put so much soap on your face and it would always go into your eyes – sometimes soap wasn’t enough, you’d need Vaseline, then baby oil.”
Now Tower Colliery’s committee is trying to recreate what the site once was, and a huge clear-up operation will soon be under way. Tony said: “It is in a bit of a mess. We are trying to get it back to how it used to look.
“What’s the phrase they use? It’s a work in progress. We want to take everything back to how it was originally built in the mid-1940s. We are aiming to make it look as close as possible to before.”
For the Tower group, there are “several various options” for what could happen to the site next, and the decision will be determined by feasibility studies, before going to council planners.
But as far as Tony is concerned, a new museum or informational site, which had been previously earmarked, is not an option.
“It’s just not on the cards because you have got to be responsible,” Tony explained. “If you make a tourist attraction like that up here, you’ve already got Big Pit (the National Coal Museum), Hopkinstown in Pontypridd and Cefn Coed Colliery Museum (near Neath).
“Whatever we do here will have an element of it, but it will not be the focus.
“It’s difficult because whatever you do has to be financially sustainable. The building with the baths in it at the top is huge. The opportunities up there are unbelievable. This place could be accommodation, a spa, something to do with zip wires – it’s got it all up here. But you couldn’t give it in this state to anyone or use it for anything until it’s all stripped out and brought up to modern standards.”
For Tony, his nostalgia relates to the people rather than the buildings, and so he does not feel much affinity with the derelict rooms, although he is angered by the spate of recent vandalism.
“I don’t have the same feeling for the pit and its buildings that some people get. I would put a bulldozer through all of these buildings – mining is all about the people, and they are all an absolutely tremendous bunch.
“I don’t have a great deal of nostalgia. It’s not the events that happened, it’s not the buildings, it’s the people.
“Mining was the best job of all. They never did illdiscipline because mining is dangerous – everyone knew that and had that job.
“But there was also flexibility – everybody had a degree of independence.
“Someone would always come along and help you if you needed. It was phenomenal.”
He’s not afraid of the task ahead of clearing up and transforming the building, however.
“Daunting? This is certainly not daunting. Daunting is when you are woken up in the middle of the mines and someone has had an accident. This is easy compared to that.”