Quick write up:
The talk began with a film from HTV on the Dinas Mine Rescue Station. The oldest in the country and was responsible for 72 mines within a ten mile radius which included Aberdare, Merthyr etc. Our own Tyrone O’Sullivan of Tower Colliery described how his father was killed at the age of 45 in an accident in Tower Colliery. A mine rescue practice at Tower was shown using “aqualungs”. Other real life rescues were shown at Six Bells Colliery, Abertillery 46 dead. But the worst rescue was a surface one, 21 October 1966 when 144 people died, including 114 children when a coal tip collapse at Aberfan.
Roy continued with some horrifying statistics of the coal industry. Up to 1900 15 to 20 thousand mines died in accidents underground. In the following 20 years the number rose to 50 thousand.
Roy spent from 1959 to 1982 at the Dinas Mine Rescue Station. Today they are appallingly under funded. They receive 14p/ton of coal mined. To make ends meet, they have branched out into providing first aid course, and restricted access rescue courses for the fire service.
Walter Coffin was born in 1784 he was the second son of Walter Coffin, the founder of a tanning business in Bridgend. In 1791 his father had purchased several farmsteads in the parish of Llantrisant, including the area of Dinas Uchef Farm from William Humphries. In 1809, at the age of 24 and bored with the tanning industry, Walter Coffin the younger set out to prospect for coal at his father's farm land in Dinas. He terminated the tenancy of Lewis Robert Richard at the site and with the financial support of his father began prospecting.
Coffin faced four major problems while prospecting for coal in lower Rhondda: there was little known of the geology of the area, there were few skilled miners in the locality, there were no transport links for three miles and there was no proven outside market. Coffin opened at least five levels in the area, his first at the Graig Vein (the Rhondda No. 1 seam) was of poor quality and thickness, but his second, also in 1809 reached the No.2 Rhondda Seam which was of a good quality. This prompted Coffin to extend his mineral lease and sink a vertical shaft. At a depth of 40 yards a good seam of bituminous coal was struck at the Dinas Lower Colliery. When Coffin marketed his "Dynas No. 3" coal, later known as "Coffin's Coal", it gained an excellent reputation for its quality and low impurities, popular in metal work and coking.
As Coffin’s levels was one of the earliest coal mines in Wales Roy hope to build a memorial to Welsh miners over the capped air shaft of Coffin’s first level.
To complete the circle Coffin, paid for the Mission Church at Dinas, where last nights talk was being held.
Cutting coal in my spare time.