South Wales Miners Museum | Visitor Gallery

Coal Mining History

Afan Colliery

Afan Colliery in Abergwynfi was sunk by Sir Daniel Gooch around 1880. In 1896 it employed 559 men producing steam coal. It was taken over by the Great Western Railway Company in 1905 and by 1908 had a workforce of 907. In 1912 the Ocean Coal Company took over the running of the colliery. It closed in 1969.

Afan Colliery Miners

Afan Colliery Lamp Room

Afan Colliery Winder

Aberfan Plaque

On the 31st October 1966 Pant Glass Junior school was engulfed by a landslide from the coal tip behind the school.
116 children and 25 adults lost their lives as a result of this disaster.

Pantglas School

Coal Tip Landslide

For many years, millions of cubic metres of excavated mining debris from the colliery were deposited on the side of Mynydd Merthyr, directly above the village of Aberfan on the opposite side of the valley. Huge piles, or "tips", of loose rock and mining spoil had been built up over a layer of highly porous sandstone that contained numerous underground springs, and several tips had been built up directly over these springs. Although local authorities had raised specific concerns in 1963 about spoil being tipped on the mountain above the village primary school, these were largely ignored by the National Coal Board's area management.[3]

Early on the morning of Friday, 21 October 1966, after several days of heavy rain, a subsidence of about 3–6 metres occurred on the upper flank of colliery waste tip No. 7. At 9:15 a.m. more than 150,000 cubic metres of water-saturated debris broke away and flowed downhill at high speed. A mass of over 40,000 cubic metres of debris slid into the village in a slurry 12 m (39 ft) deep.[4]

The slide destroyed a farm and 20 terraced houses along Moy Road, and struck the northern side of the Pantglas Junior School and part of the separate senior school, demolishing most of the structures and filling the classrooms with thick mud and rubble up to 10 m (33 ft) deep. Mud and water from the slide flooded many other houses in the vicinity, forcing many villagers to evacuate their homes.