David Crick working life at the Venallt Colliery:

Introduction:

I like to thank David for taken the time in writing down his working memories and for naming the people who worked at the colliery over the years.  David worked at the Venallt Colliery for 24 years and believes he is the last surviving person who worked in the Venallt. It is obvious from his memories below that David had a very strong affinity with the horses he worked with. (Ed Note: We can confirm that David isn’t the last surviving worker from the Venallt Colliery. A few other names have come to the surface, I will create a list at the bottom of this article of other names of people who have worked in the Venallt.)

I would like to thank him on behalf of the people of the village for sharing his memories of working in the Venallt Colliery, without David putting pen to paper these meories would have been lost.

David’s Memories of working in the Venallt colliery:

From the 16th April 1962 to the 28th August 1965 I worked on the surface of the Venallt Colliery that’s situated at the bottom of the Venallt road. This was were the journey’s of 10 trams of coal came down the incline of the mountain to the screens, where the trams of coal were emptied. My job there was to help screen the coal, oil the wheels of the trams with an oil gun, and shackle the trams together ready to be sent back up the incline and back underground.

This would usually be done maybe seven journey’s per day of ten full trams of coal, so approximately 70 full trams of coal per day.

Maybe I should mention the lads I worked with on the surface of the Venallt Colliery. There was John Evans, Philip Davies, Roy Brown and Tal Williams who was the blacksmith for the colliery, all local lads.

I left the colliery for a short while from the 26th of August, 1965 to December 1966, but returned to the Venallt Colliery in December 1965 after doing my underground training at the NCB Training Centre in Aberaman. This was four months of training. 

The stables where the horses were kept at this time was situated near the `Burma Road`, near to where the screens were. Myself and one other worker would have to be at the stables at 7 am to take the five horses up the mountain to the colliery. The route was to travel up the Venallt Road, then up to Ty Bric’s and on up the forestry road to the colliery entrance, then we would walk back down the incline to the screens. At the end of the day we would ride the last empty journey up to the colliery entrance and bring the five horse back to the stables following the reverse route.

I still remember the horses names to this day, there was Sambo, Madam, Black, Brown and Buttons, I had to buy two packets of `Spangles` a day just to keep the horses happy.

Before starting work underground at the Venallt Colliery I worked back on the surface on the screen’s for a short while and then went to work underground as a haulier with another four hauliers sometime in the December of 1965 when I was 21 years old. I was a haulier for about two years and the horse I worked with was named Darkie. 

I moved from being a haulier to become a collier and I found doing this was hard work at the time, owing to the fact that it was all manuals work, this was know at the time as piecework, were you were paid for what you produced. I has my own stall which included your own road where there was about four feet of steam coal. I would have to fill six to eight trams of coal per day, which the trams holding about a ton of coal when filled. It is vey difficult to explain the amount of work one person had to do in their work place, apart from filling trams of coal, you had to erect your own timber roof supports, lay your own rail track and  shift the `muck` that was in the coal seam. To describe the amount of handwork involved to earn a decent wage is quite difficult to explain.

For the last two to three years of the colliery and up until June 1986 when it closed, I had finished at the coalface and for the last few years went back to working as a haulier, working with the horses underground which I loved. The colliery closed in June 1986 and we were all made redundant.

After being made redundant from the Venallt I did find work  at Rheola colliery from 5/1/1987 to 21/6/1987.

I then moved to another Private mine, which was Nant-y-Cafn Colliery in Seven Sisters. I worked there as a haulier, working with two horses called Turbo and Steel.

David and Turbo at Nant-y-Cafn, Seven Sisters

I worked at Nant-y-Cafn colliery between 1986 and 1990 when the colliery also closed. What I would like to mention is the horse Steel that I worked with was the very last pit pony to work underground in South Wales. He was retired from working underground and went to a Pit Pony Sanctuary in Pontypridd.

David with Steel at Nant-y-Cafn, Seven Sisters

Part 2: The Venallt workforce

Back in the 1060’s it seemed as if there were just three families working in the colliery and all were local to the village. There was The James family, The Collins family and the Shaw family. The Directors (owners) of the colliery were George Shaw, David (Dai) James, Ron Morgan, Des Llewellyn, Doug Winters and Ken Owens. The Manager was a Mr Gwyn Weston, the Hauliers were Eddie James (gaffer), Selwyn Collins, Davis (Dai) Ball, Dai Llewellyn and Roy Brown. I worked in a different district with my own pit pony namely Darkie, this was with two colliers on development named Tommy Mason and Dennis Lewis. 

I remember the names of the local colliers from the beginning from Cwmgwrach and Glynneath were, Tommy Collins, Len Collins, Mickey Sedgemore, Bryan Pugh, Peter Howells, Ray Roberts,, Bert Cabble, Mansell Hobbs, Charlie Mead and Lou Miles. 

The way the underground system worked was there was ten colliers, five hauliers and ten drams to a journey and what was known as a double parting underground. This was a main and tail haulage rope system used underground to bring the empty trams to the double parting and take the full trams out to the surface. This system would take ten empty trams to the double parting and ten full trams taken out to be dropped down the incline to the screens below. 

The five hauliers would take two (empty) trams each off the parting to the two colliers each and come back with two full trams each to the double parting making up a journey of ten full trams, this was how the system worked.

The haulage driver name were Will Parson and at the time there were two underground repairers, namely Tom James and Tom Brown. As time went on and workmen left the colliery for whatever reason and new workers were employed. These are the names of the new workers I remember, most of which would be local men. There was Gwyn Watts and Glyn Jenkins both colliers and they were also shots-men, this meant they were qualified to handle and use explosives. They would fire coal holes that the colliers had drilled at the end of their coaling shift. During my employment at the Venallt Colliery I also became a qualified shots-man, in other words we acquired a Shot firing Certificate.

Some of the other names I can remember who replaced older workers are Adam Rees, Lyn Sedgemore, Wayne Sedgemore, Mark Waters, Gary Morgan and Steven Mackie.

In the 1980’s the colliery had hit a few problems, the main district hit geological faults, which eventually led the the colliery closing in June 1986.

A very old photograph of the incline to the Venallt Colliery which would take full drams of coal down the incline and return the empty drams to the colliery. You will notice that the mountain is not covered by forestry trees, just the bottom slopes, so this would date the photograph to circa 1920’s when the Forestry Commission first started planting trees in the area; in response to a critical need to rebuild Britain’s timber reserves, which had been severely depleted during World War I. 

Other workers who have worked in the Venallt, not mentioned above:

Horses that worked at the Venallt:

Duke, Blackie, Buttons, Blossom (borrowed horse)

Stories about the horses:

David Crick: When i worked underground i remember BUTTONS and his haulier was Dai Llewelyn and Buttons was a real star , for example the commands the horses understood were come on for forward / see to go right/come here to go left / and stand back to push a tram backwards , i say this simply because Buttons could reverse a full tram of coal as good as going forward , also i remember that when taking Buttons from the stables up the mountain to the colliery i had to use a bit in his mouth like a riding pony and ride him and lead the other to horses , i was also Buttons haulier for a while when Dai Llewellyn was off work .

Paul Owen: I do remember being thrown on to the back of one of the pit ponies, Buttons at the end of the shift. Buttons was a real character who, even at the end of a days work would stamp, buck and prance around as if he wanted to really wanted to buck you off. It was all an act, but gave the miners a great laugh. When my father was feeding the horses, Buttons was the only one to deliberately lean on him, pinning him to the stall wall. I think he was just mischievous and trying to get a reaction from my father.

Paul Owen: Another favourite memory was releasing the pit ponies into Dick Hulls field, Rheola for their summer break during miners fortnight. They really let rip when let loose.