THE COST OF COAL

September last year marked the 77^th anniversary of one of Britain’s worst mining accidents.  Every year the people gather at the Gresford Colliery Disaster Memorial to commemorate the tragedy and to remember the 266 who lost their lives back in 1934. Last year they also remembered the four miners killed at the Gleision Colliery near Swansea just a week earlier. Once again reminding us of the true cost of coal – disaster, death and disease. And once again another disaster where the mine managers and owners have come in for severe criticism over their actions.

Yet many forget this expensive human cost, forget these deadly consequences, even forget tragedies such as Gresford.  Given the scale of the event it surprised me just how few people know of it, and, how even fewer, remember it. How many have already forgotten the deaths at Gleision Colliery in South Wales last year?  Perhaps people will remember the happier outcome of the Chilean miners for longer.

Looking at the commemoration service and talking to Canon Griffiths made me want to know more, and there is a lot of information, but some of it is perhaps scattered so i have tried to gather the key points here and provide links to interesting pages for others to further investigate.

Lying just inside the Welsh Border, the North Wales coalfield stretches from Point of Ayr on the Flintshire coast down to the Shropshire border and even under the River Dee to Neston on the Wirral, which had its own coal-mines until 1927.

As records dating back to the 15^th century show, mining was of growing importance to North Wales since the latter part of the middle ages.  These show profits being made by the manors of Ewloe, Hopedale and Mostyn, in the then county of Flintshire, and, just a few miles south of Gresford, of Brymbo, in the then county of Denbighshire.  This is documented in a pamphlet issued by The National Coal Board in 1953 which uses “The Rise of the British Coal Industry” by Professor J.U. Nef as its source.

Professor Nef is able to cite that by 1593 the “port books” (probably of Mostyn) contain records of shipments from the Dee estuary which grew rapidly, he says, until the Civil War. He talks of mines in the North Wales coalfield being “of some importance as early as the reign of Henry VIII.  During  and after Elizabeth's reign mines were also worked up the valley of the Dee near Wrexham, and in various parts of the Lordship of Bromfield and Yale in Denbighshire” - although it wouldn't be until the 18th Century that mining for coal really took off.  By 1900 it was recorded there were over 12,500 miners producing three million tonnes a year. Despite all the mines mentioned above being within a few miles of Gresford, the mine at Gresford did not arrive until the early 20^th Century coinciding with the arrival of mechanisation – which meant that deep coal reserves could now be accessed. Henry Dennis (civil engineer, industrialist and founder of the Dennis Ruabon brick and tile works) and his son, Henry Dyke Dennis, began work on the new Gresfordmine in 1907. Four years later the two shafts were completed.

Both Dennis and Martin shafts were approximately 2,263 feet (690 metres) deep, 18 feet in diameter, about 50 yards apart.  The Dennis section extended over a mile underground, and mainly worked the Main and Brassey seams. The Brassey seam was virtually gas-free coal for commercial use, while the Main (six to seven feet thick) was very gassy, producing firedamp (mixture of gases but mostly methane, mixed with air) which is highly combustible. The first coal was brought to the surface in June 1911.

The worst disaster on the NorthWales coalfield took place in the early hours of Saturday 22 September 1934. At about 2 am, an explosion took place in the Dennis Section and, with the exception of one deputy and five men, all of the men working in that section lost their lives. The explosion was followed by a fire which spread into the main air intake.  The scale of the disaster was increased as many miners had doubled up their shifts on the Friday (21^st September) so they could attend the football match between Wrexham and Tranmere Rovers due to be played on the Saturday afternoon - consequently there were many more miners down the pit than normal.

Round the clock, throughout that weekend, rescue teams fought desperately to bring the fire under control, but to no avail. By the evening of the following day, the carbon monoxide readings in the Dennis Section clearly indicated that nobody could still be alive and, given the rescue operations had already claimed the lives of three members of the rescue brigade, it was decided that the mine would have to be sealed off at the top of the two shafts. Only eleven bodies were recovered of the 262 miners who were lost in the disaster.

Further explosions occurred underground in the days that followed and on Tuesday 25 September, a surface worker was killed by flying debris from the pit-head.

You can listen to three BBC news reports from the day of the disaster on 22 September 1934 and leading up to the sealing of the pit head. The BBC has quite extensive coverage In 1982 BBC Radio Wales interviewed two of the mere handful of survivors to coincide with the opening of the memorial. 

Newspaper coverage was extensive even global, just like the more recent Chilean disaster.  These digitized Australian newspapers show the level of media interest, covering the disaster, the attempted rescue, the further explosion and death of one of the rescuers, the putting of 2,500 miners on the dole, reflection on the tragedy, the attempt to reopen the mine in the following January, the awarding of the King Edward award for gallantry, the issuing of the summons, the charges with regard to the breaches of the Mines Act, the verdict on the company and its manager,

More recent media coverage may be found in a BBC2 Wales documentary broadcast to mark the 70^th anniversary, "The Terrible Price", tells the story of the disaster using archive film and radio reports with the recollections of eye-witnesses and survivors, and relatives of some of the victims. The harrowing tale of neglect by the mine owners who knew of the dangers of gas is told with a re-enactment of the inquiry into the disaster. Includes 30 extra minutes of material not shown on the television programme. The script is available to read on the director's website.  

The Court of Inquiry, which published its report in February 1937, condemned the lack of proper records at the mine, the lack of adequate ventilation, the careless manner in which shot firing was carried, the excessive hours worked by the men at Gresford, the lack of an air-lock over the upcast shaft, the inadequate training of the management and the inadequate supervision of safety standards by both management and unions. The mine was re-entered in 1935 and coal production was gradually resumed from January 1936.
  

After the pit finally closed in 1973, the relatives of those killed began a campaign for a permanent memorial. Nine years later the memorial was unveiled, dedicated on 26 November 1982, in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales and the surviving relatives. The memorial is the last remaining piece of the mechanism from the colliery, which serves as the memorial.  In 2000, as a final act of remembrance, the names of all those who lost their lives in the pit were added to the memorial. (It is just off the A483 - traveling towards Chester from the Wrexham direction, passing the exit for Gresford, if you were to look to your left as you go over the roundabout you would see it.

The names of the men are also recorded in Books of Remembrance which can be seen in Wrexham Public Library, All Saints Church in Gresford underneath the memorial picture and now online.

"Danger always lurks down below. In the extraction of coal, men contend against darkness, noxious gases and the immense pressure of rock and stone which overlie the coal seams."

So said  David Grenfel, MP for Gower, opening a debate in the House of Commons following the publication of Inquiry's findings.  He went on to refer to facts presented to the House by another member in an earlier debate on coal mining that in the previous 11 years more than 11,000 men had lost their lives in the hidden depths of our coal mines. He also cited the figure of nearly 2,000,000 persons who have been the victims of notifiable accidents in that same period.

Look at those figures again, two million injured and eleven thousand dead in just an eleven year period - and those figures do not recount the lives blighted and cut short by disease and illness.  The harsh reality is, despite the scale of the deaths and injuries in the headline disasters, we should always remember the hard lives of the miners, scarred and cut short in pursuit of "black gold".

No wonder ex-miners, like Canon David Griffiths, have mixed feelings at best about their experiences.