Tales from the underground are told on film
PROPOSING to your fiancée with a crystal because you can’t afford a wedding ring.
Becoming the breadwinner for your family at the age of nine. Wearing clogs instead of shoes because they would melt in the heat.
These are just some of the stories from Welsh collieries.
The coal that was pumped out of the Valleys flowed down the Glamorganshire canal to Cardiff Docks.
From there it would go on to help construct and power the modern world we see around us today.
That progress was built on the backs of the people who worked in the mines. Their sweat, toil and health was poured into the coal industry. This not only produced this “black gold” but also created some of the most incredible stories.
These stories are being told as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project where children from four primary schools: Cyfarthfa, Pantyscallog, Edwardsville and Ynysowen as well as some local scouts, collected memories from their parents, grandparents and great grandparents.
The Deep Navigation Colliery, which was the deepest colliery in Wales, and the intense picketing during the 1984-85 strike in Merthyr Vale are featured heavily. ■ “Eventually, my grandfather was too unfit to work and couldn’t breathe very well.”
Carol Smith is the granddaughter of miner David Daniel Davies who was born in 1876. He went underground at age 12 in 1888.
“My grandfather left school at the age of 12, and he went straight to the colliery for a job. He started life digging coal at Deep Navigation.”
Carol has several items belonging her grandfather, including the labour certificate he needed that proved he was 12 and therefore old enough to work.
She said: “Eventually, my grandfather was too unfit to work and couldn’t breathe very well. So they moved him from digging coal to look after the horses.
“He worked there for 57 years until he was 69.”
■ “I had to crawl along and work in the wet. It wasn’t very pleasant I can tell you.”
John Reece, the grandfather of boyscout Connor Reece-Williams, worked in Wales’ deepest and wettest coal mine Deep Navigation in 1970.
He said: “They’d drop us down in the cage at about 30 metres a second.
“They’d whip you down no problem. The mine was half a mile deep. It was so hot at the coal-face we were given salt tablets from the ambulance room to dissolve in our flasks, because we were losing so much salt through sweat.
“I was working a three foot seem. Water [was] dripping from the roof constantly. I had to crawl along and work in the wet. It wasn’t very pleasant I can tell you.
“I was sad to see the pits close in one way. But health-wise it benefited a lot of miners. A lot lived longer.
“My dad was a miner and he died with 80% coal dust in his lungs. If I had been in the pits until I retired at 65 I doubt I’d be alive now.”
■ “I used to go down to the coal trucks pinching coal from the siding. We had no money to buy coal.”
Terry Seargent, 83, from Mount Pleasant was only nine years old when his father died leaving him with his brother and three sisters.
“I was the oldest and became the bread-winner,” he said.
“I used to go down to the coal trucks pinching coal from the siding. We had no money to buy coal. That’s how we survived and kept warm.
“When I got to 15 I started going underground in Treharris. Mining was the only job around. There was no other job. I could get free coal for my mother, 12 tonne a year.
“We’d get down the pit by 7am. But it’d take us until 8am to walk to the district (coal face). Then we’d work all day with just a 20-minute break.
“If we didn’t get back to work straight away and the foreman caught us, he’d send us home.”