Near Swansea

There was a much older Velinfran Colliery located in Llansamlet and opened by the Velinfran Colliery Company of Llansamlet in 1885. It employed 104 men in 1899, 102 men in 1900 and 73 men in 1901. The downcast shaft was 9 feet in diameter and 210 feet deep while the upcast shaft was 6 feet 6 inches in diameter and 205 feet deep worked the Drews Vein which was 69 yards deep and had a thickness of 30 inches abandoning this seam in March 1902.

Felinfran was located five miles to the north of Swansea and just to the south of Clydach. The owners were the Felin Fran Colliery Company which started work on Felin Fran in 1932 and completed this level in 1935 to work for house coal. The main drift was 650 yards long. It started off in the Drews and Swansea Four-Feet seams, initially being a naked lamp mine. It came under the control of the Hendy Merthyr Colliery Company in July 1941.

In 1943 it was decided to develop the Graigola seam as well as the existing Swansea Four-Feet seam workings. To open up the Graigola seam it was decided to purchase from Monds Nickel Company the old Guerets Graigola Colliery and utilize part of the old Guerets Graigola (closed in 1904) as a return ventilation passageway. The old workings had first to be pumped dry and then a new roadway driven for a thousand yards to link the Felin Fran workings to Guerets Graigola with this return ventilation roadway going through the old pit bottom (Guerets shaft was 18 feet in diameter and 143 yards deep) and coming to the surface alongside the Pontardawe Road, it appears that this work took until 1946 to be completed.

In 1943/5 it employed 198 men underground and 57 men on the surface with the manager being T.E. Lloyd. In August 1944 three colliers from this mine were fined between £1 and £2 by magistrates for breach of contract. They had refused (against the Union’s advice) to work due to poor ventilation but had “failed to discharge the burden of proof.”

Just before nationalization, the Hendy Merthyr Colliery Company was registered in Clydach with a board of directors consisting of; E. Thomas, P.M. Thomas, and R. Thomas. At that time it was operating the following mines:

  • FelinFran with 255 men working underground and 54 on the surface. The manager was T.E. Lloyd.
  • Hendy Merthyr with 89 men working underground and 37 on the surface. The manager was D.L. Jones.
  • Maesmelyn with 54 men working underground and 22 on the surface. The manager was D.L. Jones.

On Nationalisation in 1947, this colliery was placed in the National Coal Board’s, South Western Division’s, No.1 (Swansea) Area, No.3 (Felinfran) Group. At that time it employed 67 men on the surface and 228 men underground with the manager then, and in 1954, being T.E. Lloyd.

On Sunday the 6th of April 1947 some of the men were carrying out essential maintenance work when an explosion killed two of them and injured another six workmen.

For the week ending November 6th1954, Felinfran recorded its best ever output figures when it raised 2,130 tons of coal over five days.

The Colliery had its own manufactured fuel plant. Training for faceworkers was carried out in the Graigola Main fully reserved training face which had working spaces for four supervisors and four trainees.

In 1957 the NCB invested £100,000 into improvements at this colliery but were disappointed that the output per manshift was only 19 hundredweights following that investment. The manpower at the colliery remained fairly constant until 1960 and then dropped to 217 men in 1961.

In August of 1961, the NCB announced that it wanted to close Felinfran and transfer the men to Brynlliw Colliery, the NUM opposed closure and claimed that there were another two to three million tons of coal reserves at the colliery. A compromise was agreed whereas some men were transferred but at the same time, development was intensified. In 1961 this colliery was still in the No.1 Area’s, No.3 Group along with Clydach Merthyr, Daren and Graig Merthyr Collieries. The total manpower for the Group was 1,449 men, while the coal production for that year was 478,452 tons. The Group Manager was D. Griffiths, and the Area Manager was J.G. Tait. Felinfran Colliery closed on the 13th of December 1965 on the grounds that it was uneconomic. It was the last mine to have worked in the Llansamlet area.

Some Statistics:

  • 1933: Manpower: 12 prospecting.
  • 1937: Manpower: 222.
  • 1938: Manpower: 176.
  • 1940: Manpower: 254.
  • 1944: Manpower: 294.
  • 1947: Manpower: 295.
  • 1948: Manpower: 284.
  • 1949: Manpower: 300. Output: 90,000 tons.
  • 1950: Manpower: 294.
  • 1953: Manpower: 290. Output: 90,000 tons.
  • 1954: Manpower: 300. Output: 95,149 tons.
  • 1955: Manpower: 295. Output: 97,440 tons.
  • 1956: Manpower: 301. Output: 92,102 tons.
  • 1957: Manpower: 308. Output: 83,334 tons.
  • 1958: Manpower: 293. Output: 68,635 tons.
  • 1960: Manpower: 284. Output: 57,963 tons.
  • 1961: Manpower: 217. Output: 53,016 tons.
  • 1962: Manpower: 216.
  • 1964: Manpower: 261.

 

Information supplied by Ray Lawrence and used here with his permission.

 

 

 

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