Heritage – Welsh Coal Mining Heritage

(The painting above by Craig Bevan is of the Primrose Colliery at Rhos in the parish of Cliybebyll.)

The publication Tareni Colliery is more than the history of this one mine, Tareni. It is the coal mining history of the parish of Cilybebill and the communities of Rhos, Gellinudd, and Alltwen and of the vast mining enterprises that worked coal in Mynydd Marchywel over a 150-year period from the early 1800s up to the late 1940s. This mining heritage details the separate coalmines, the companies that operated them, the legal leases taken out to establish the mines, the various Royalties payable to the landowners for each type of coal brought to the surface, ie. five pence per ton for Red Vein coals, six pence per ton for Peacock coals, and the additional cost of wayleaves for crossing the landowners’ lands, this being payable at an additional one penny per ton of minerals mined such as coal or fireclay.

Read more in Tareni Colliery, The Mine, The Miners and Their Communities. A History of a Mining Enterprise in the Swansea Valley ISBN: 978-1-5272-0129-3.

Price £30.00 p&p £4.95, available from Clive Reed 01792 830782, or email lynnegent46@gmail.com

ANTHRACITE COALS
Peacock Seam, Red Vein, Big Vein, mined in the Swansea Valley by The Tareni Colliery Coal Company. Read about the history of Tareni Colliery and of the company that sank the pits to reach the fabulous anthracite coals that lay up to one thousand feet beneath Mynydd Marchywel and Mynydd Alltygrug. Tareni Colliery publication, 288 pages, 150,000 words, 190 images, and thirty interviews is the story of 100 years of coalmining in the mid Swansea Valley area and of the people who worked in the pits sunk by the company.
The story of Tareni Colliery is much more than the history of one coalmine. This publication is the history of the company that sank those mines, The South Wales Primrose Coal Company Ltd, and of its foundation in the 1850’s from the original Primrose Colliery at Rhos and of its sinking new pits and opening new drift mines in the search for high quality anthracite coals in the badly faulted and geologically disturbed region of the mid Swansea Valley area.
This is also the story of the miners who cut the coals, of the hauliers who brought the coals to the surface, of the men who operated the washeries to clean and grade the coals, the blacksmiths who maintained the equipment at the mines, and of many other colliery workers who contributed to the operations in winning the coals, but also of the miner’s families, people who made the communities of Godre’r Graig, Rhos, Cilmaengwyn, Ystalyfera, Pant-teg, and many other villages and towns of the Swansea Valley coalfield. Follow the miners’ trails of The South Wales Primrose Coal Company and of The Tareni Colliery Company in this fascinating publication.
Tareni Colliery, The Mine, The Miners and Their Communities: A History of a Mining Enterprise in the Swansea Valley. ISBN: 978-1-5272-0129-3.