CWMNANTDDU. Llanerch, Monmouthshire. 25th. May, 1869.

An explosion at the colliery owned by the Ebbw Vale Coal Company, about two miles from Pontypool, claimed seven lives and on the 1st. June Mr. Lionel Brough, the Inspector went down the pit to examine the No.1 deep heading and a group of nine stalls in the Meadow Vein coal where the disaster took place. The heading was about eight feet high and the seam was not considered to be fiery. For the most part, the Meadow Vein had a shale roof often called “clift” or “clod”, but in the neighbourhood of the No.1 heading the roof was composed of laminated, carbonaceous rock which was known to give off gas if it was disturbed and this was the state of the roof over the nine stalls in the No.1 heading.

About eight months before the disaster, the upper stall in the heading had to stop work because there had been a heavy fall but no firedamp was found after the fall. When the fall was cleared, the stall was then worked and merged into another and work continued here until another fall took place. This was accompanied by firedamp. The night before the disaster the roof weighted and caused a fall but Mr. Brough found it impossible to say whether this was before or after the explosion but there was no doubt that the fall was accompanied with a release of firedamp. About midnight on the fatal night there was evidence that a fall was heard.

There was reason to believe that certain men killed in the disaster found gas coming from the face and that they were alarmed by the grinding noises coming from the roof and considered it necessary to leave the face. The Inspector thought that the men went down to Stall No. 7 where they had agreed to cut the bottom for other workmen. It was thought that on the way they stopped to fill a tram and then passed down to cut the bottom coal. After that, they went back to stall No.1 to get their clothes and they were doing this when the pit fired.

Those who died were:

  • Hananiah Williams, collier of Abersychan,
  • Thomas Williams, bottom cutter, single of Garsdiffaith,
  • Thomas Jones, collier, David Rees, collier, left a wife and 3 children,
  • Henry Rees aged 14 years,
  • William Cooke or Coope jnr., bottom cutter, left a wife and child and
  • Alfred Davies, collier.

Two horses and a donkey were also killed.

Thomas Green, John Morgan, and John Mitchell had miraculous escapes. Green covered his mouth with his cap after the explosion and managed to crawl to the level from where he got to the bottom of the shaft and raised the alarm. Morgan was blown behind some timbers and had lost hope when he was rescued by the ostler, James who had a light and found him. John Mitchell was found unconscious lying in the level and brought out of the pit. The three men were treated by a doctor at the surface and taken to their homes.

At the inquiry into the men’s deaths, Mr. Brough stated:

I have had to inquire into many cases of the serious explosion, and in most of these some person or other remained to afford a reasonable idea of what had really taken place but in this matter which renders it necessary that we should meet here this day, there are none to appeal to not one link of the human chain is left to give the slightest clue as to the actual nature of the occurrence. I have had to find it all out and elaborate on it as best as I could by patient investigation.

Whether the brattice was close enough to the face was not in question but the Inspector thought it would not have cleared the gas. He found that the blast went down as far as No.5 stall and then went to the deep heading through the the door and almost into the main level. The head viewer expressed the idea that the top door had been left open and so the accumulation of gas has ensued. There were 6,000 cubic feet of air per minute passing directly from the surface and although Mr. Brough commented that this did not seem to be a lot, he expressed the opinion that there was no violation of the First General Rule. He thought that the gas came from a blower and at the time of the inquiry commented that gas was still issuing from this blower. He thought it was the change in the roof that had caused the disaster and it was from this that the gas came.

The jury brought in the verdict that:

The deceased were accidentally killed by an explosion of gas caused by a blower in the stall of the Cwm-nant-ddu works.

 

REFERENCES
The Mines Inspectors Report 1866. Mr. Lionel Brough.
The Colliery Guardian, 28th May 1869, p.515.
”And they worked us to death” Vol.1. Ben Fieldhouse and Jackie Dunn. Gwent Family History Society.

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

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