‘They thought I was mad to restore colliery building’
IT HAS taken more than a decade, with a few ups and downs along the way, but this former colliery winding house has been utterly transformed by a Swansea Valley mum.
Linda Frame bought the former Clydach Merthyr drift mine building in 1999, despite protestations from her two children.
“They thought I was completely mad,” she said. “There was just four walls and an asbestos roof. But it’s set in 12ft of concrete — it’s not going anywhere!”
The main restoration was completed in 2011, and a pair of former miners who hauled coal from underground there have been among the visitors.
“They couldn’t believe it,” said Mrs Frame. “One of them gave me his brass tag, which miners used to leave behind when they took their helmets and lamps and went to work.”
This, she explained, would make it easier to identify the missing or dead in the event of an accident.
Mrs Frame has been doing bits and pieces to the house, which is on four levels, since 2011 and has now won a planning appeal to convert a brick outbuilding into holiday accommodation. The former headteacher said the outbuilding served as a medical room for injured or sick miners.
She plans to extend it a little, install a balcony and make it accessible for people with disabilities. She hopes to complete this project in the next two years.
The drift mine at Craigcefnparc is said to have opened in 1863 and was known locally as Nixon’s mine after its original owner. By the turn of the 20th century some 400 miners worked there, rising to nearly 600 by the end of the Second World War.
After buying the winding house, which came with five acres of land, Mrs Frame discovered that her greatgrandfather had worked there.
The drift mine stopped producing coal in the early 1960s but was kept open until 1978 to provide ventilation and pumping for the Graig Merthyr colliery to the west. It now feels very much like home. “I love it,” said the 62-year-old. “It’s so quiet and peaceful, and I’ve got a river in the garden.”
But she had plenty to do when she, her daughter and son, who are now 34 and 29 and live in England, moved in on December 23, 2000.
“It was freezing,” she recalled. “The farmer who owned it used to keep pigs there, and their manure kept the fire going for a couple of months!”
Mrs Frame also had to bring in water from a pipe half a mile down the road, and reconnect the electricity supply. Gradually she worked her way through the project, while learning about the building’s history.
“The kitchen is where the engine driver would have sat,” she said.
The roof is made of reconstituted slate and the latticed windows have stone mullion surrounds. The fourbedroom house is heated by oil as there is no gas supply, and sewage heads to a sceptic tank.
“The one mistake I made was not having enough light coming into the main hallway – that’s the next project,” she said.
Mrs Frame said she bought the building and land for £38,000, but did not want to disclose how much she had spent renovating it or how much it might be worth. She said her children now looked forward to returning to the house, called Cathelyd Newydd, which borders the RSPB Cwm Clydach woodland reserve.
“They love it,” she said. “All their friends come here. When we have really nice weather, they feel like they’re abroad.”