Pentre Colliery Explosion – Rhondda Valley – 1871

PENTRE. Rhondda Valley, Glamorganshire. 24th. February, 1871.

The colliery was the property of the Pentre and Church Merthyr Steam Coal Collieries Company and was in the Parish of Ystradyfodwg. There were about twenty pits in the valley and they produced a total of about one and a half million tons. Coal had been obtained from a level but a shaft had been sunk to 212 yards to the Four Feet seam through Two feet. The coal was taken from the Two Feet by cross measure drifts to the bottom of the pit in the Four Feet and from there wound to the surface.

There were three shafts, two were downcast and winding shafts and one was an upcast. about 200 men and boys worked at the pit but on that Friday night, only forty were at work. All went well until there was a tremendous report and the people in the nearby cottages felt the ground quake. The cage at the downcast shaft was blown into the headgear which was completely demolished. Bricks were blown from the upcast shaft onto cottages hundreds of yards away.

Mr. Kelly, the manager and William Rosser were at the pit in a matter of minutes and attempted to go down to see what they could do. Rosser’s son, a young man of 23 years, would not let his father go down and went with five volunteers. Joseph Thomas, David Evans (the carpenter), John Edwards, Morgan Morgan and John John. They did not get far from the bottom of the shaft before they felt the effects of the afterdamp and had to retrace their steps but young Rosser and Joseph Thomas were too late and were overcome by the gas.

When his father heard of the fate of his son, Rosser senior went down with John Rae, a collier. he reached the body of his son but was too feeble to pull him out and had to return to the surface suffering from the effects of the gas. Teams worked all night and the bodies of three horses and all the men were recovered.

Those who died were:

• Henry Backer aged 36 years, wife and 5 children.
• George Coburn aged 32 years, wife and 2 children.
• Enoch Davies aged 30 years.
• Robert Davies aged 23 years.
• George Day, aged 36 years, married.
• Samuel Evans aged 29 years.
• Thomas Griffiths aged 48 years, wife and 8 children.
• Henry Haines aged 17 years.
• William Howells.
• John Hughes aged 34 years.
• James Jones aged 20 years.
• Morgan Jones aged 65 years, wife and 7 children.
• William Lewis, flueman aged 38 years.
• William Meredith aged 17 years.
• John Michael aged 28 years.
• John Mills or Miles aged 40 years.
• Daniel Morgan alias Park aged 24 years.
• David Morgan aged 28 years.
• William Rosser aged 21 years, single.
• John Sullivan aged 28 years.
• Joseph Thomas aged 30 years, single.
• Walter Williams aged 35 years.

The disaster left twenty widows, seventy orphaned children and several other dependants. All were killed by the blast and two rescue workers later lost their lives, bringing the final death toll to thirty-eight. This was the first explosion to have taken place in the Two Feet Nine Inch Seam in the Rhondda or the Aberdare Valley and up to then the seam was not considered a fiery one.

On examining the colliery after the disaster, Mr. Brough and Mr. Wales, Mines Inspectors, examined the faces at the North District going to the end of the No.3 heading. Mr. Wales thought the gas came from the end of this heading in Elias Thomas’s place. The gas that was given off there found its way to the furnace by way of Gravell’s heading and down the incline. It was thought that the gas-fired at the furnace and the blast went back to Thomas’s place by the way it had come and then through the face and into the main heading where the blast must have been like the barrel of a gun and fired gas in other parts of the colliery and ignited a blower.

The Inspector commented:

A hurricane will travel on the surface at a rate of 100 miles an hour but a hurricane has no chance with a blast underground.

He went on to comment:

The ground is fresh, few pits have been sunk, the gas had never been tapped, the depths of the earth have never been perforated and gas exists in an awful state of pressure and in an intensely ignitable condition and the only safeguard for human life in pits sunk in a new valley is an abundance of wind and that is not all, we must add in addition look forward to some better invention in lamps.

Mr. Wales thought that the ventilation at the colliery was satisfactory but as the dimension of the shaft was given in the report as 4 feet, he went on to say:

I do not approve of these small pits. It was sunk by a Staffordshire man, and in that county, they will sink a hundred or two hundred yards to work ten acres of coal, but in Wales when we have a hundred times more fire, we want in big pits.

The jury brought in the verdict:

That we are unanimous of the opinion that the explosion occurred through a sudden discharge of gas and that it probably ignited at the furnace and that there is no blame attached to any of the officials connected with the colliery.

The jury also recommended that the suggestions made by Mr. Wales should be carried out and that a night banksman should be employed at the colliery. The recommendations made by the Inspector suggested that a new shaft from 12 to 14 feet in diameter should be sunk for an upcast and the present two shafts used as downcast shafts and that a fan capable of producing 80 to 100,000 cubic feet of air per minute should be placed at the top of the new shaft instead of furnaces.

REFERENCES
Mines Inspectors Report, 1871. Mr. Thomas E. Wales.
Colliery Guardian, 3rd March 1871, p.236, 24th March, 1871, p.236.
”And they worked us to death” Vols.1&2. Ben Fieldhouse and Jackie Dunn. Gwent Family History Society.

Information supplied by Ian Winstanley and the Coal Mining History Resource Centre.