Padley's Gorwydd Colliery by Paul Reynolds

Transcription

1 Padley's Gorwydd Colliery by Paul Reynolds Hidden away behind the houses in Gowerton is a ten-acre plot of woodland. On one side it backs on to Gorwydd Road; on the other its boundary is formed by the Swansea to Carmarthen railway line. Over the years it has acquired a covering of oak trees and willow scrub. In 1984, thanks to the efforts of a local resident, Mrs Margaret Morgan, a tree preservation order was placed on this patch of woodland by Lliw Valley Borough Council. In so doing the Council recognised that it would be valuable to preserve the site in its present state, both for environmental considerations and because of the natural history of the site. However, the owners of the land gave notice that they intended to appeal against the order and have in fact already cleared part of the land. At the time of writing (March 1985) the future of this little plot of woodland is still far from secure. Although it shows few signs of it now, this was in fact the site of the Gorwydd Colliery and its tips. The colliery ceased working in 1891, and so thoroughly has revegetation taken place thatit is only the piles of overgrown spoil, a few tumbledown buildings, and the poor drainage that reveal the history of the site. It shows how effectively nature can take over once human activity has ceased. The beginnings of the Gorwydd.

2 The Gorwydd Colliery was sunk in about 1850 on land that formed part of Cefngorwydd farm, one of the Gower properties of the Dunraven Estate. Coal had been worked on the property prior to this but on a different location. The 1830 one inch Ordnance Survey map shows "coal shafts" on what is now roughly the site of the Grammar School, and correspondence preserved in the Dunraven collection at the National Library of Wales and dating from also refers to coal working on Cefngorwydd. Coal had also been worked on the adjacent Cefngorwydd Fawr, part of the Penrice Estate, from at least the 1720s and very probably back into the seventeenth century. The Gorwydd Colliery of c.1850 was sunk by a Swansea entrepreneur, Silvanus Padley, a member of the family with a long tradition of commercial activity in the town. He was later to open up also the nearby Dunvant Colliery. The date 1850 is derived from an article by M. J. Thomas (GOITER XXI (1970), 71-75), and whilst he does not cite his sources, Gowerton (IIGower Road") and the Gorwydd Colliery in 1876/7. Reproduced from the six inch to one mile Ordnance Survey Map with the sanction of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office. Thomas s date seems entirely probable. The actual location of the colliery has clearly been determined by the line of the railway from Swansea to Carmarthen, which was constructed in the years , and the first accounts in the Dunraven papers (NLW Dunraven 398) for royalties due on coal worked at the Gorwydd date from

3 means a common name: it could be that Alfred Sterry was related in some way to William Sterry and so was using pre-existing family contacts in Swansea's commercial circles to enter the Gorwydd partnership. It is definitely known that William was not the father of Alfred, but he could have been some other fairly close relative. Alfred Sterry settled in Swansea at about the time he took over the Gorwydd even if he was not here already. In 1864 he married Alice Rosina Crawshay, the daughter of Henry Crawshay and part of a junior branch of the great dynasty of ironmasters of Merthyr Tydfil. No doubt Sterry was pleased to marry a girl with such useful and potentially profitable connections. One only hopes that Crawshay was equally satisfied that a small coalowner from Gowerton was a good enough catch for his daughter. The couple set up home at Danycoed, near The Grange, at Blackpill, and two daughters were born in due course, Alice and Eve. At the time of the 1871 census Sterry was clearly living in style, with a cook, two housemaids, a nursemaid, a lady's maid and a monthly nurse to look after himself and his small family. It was a large establishment, certainly larger than average and almost as certainly larger than necessary. It smacks of conspicuous consumption and suggests that Sterry was anxious to create the impression of a successful and important man of business. Perhaps he was-or perhaps he just hoped that he was. The scale of his commercial activity would not in itself appear to support or justify such a standard of housekeeping.

4 1852. A date for the commencement of sinking in 1850 would therefore make very good sense. One regularly finds collieries being opened up in response to railway expansion and located in convenient positions adjacent to the new lines. Silvanus Padley appears to have had different partners at different times. According to M. J. Thomas, his two brothers were also associated with him in the venture, while Hunt's Mineral Statistics (1854) gives the owners of the Gorwydd as Padley & Williams. Pearse's Swansea Directory (1856) has S. padley & Co., and in 1859 the annual report of H. M. Inspector of Mines for that year names Padley & Sterry as the owners.alfred Sterry and the Gorwydd. The reference in the Inspector's report for 1859 is the first that occurs to Alfred Sterry in connection with the Gorwydd. Sterry was a capitalist with interests in the West Midlands who was probably taken into partnership b Padley to provide additional funds for the business. Sterry was born in Surrey in 1823 a1though the family seems to have belonged to the Gloucestershire/Worcestershire area. How he came to be connected with Swansea is not certain, but a possible clue is provided by a small advertisement in The Cambrian some 25 years earlier (30th August 1834). This notice informed the public that the partnership as fruiterers and oyster-dealers between William Sterry of the Bird-in-Hand, Westbury-on- Severn, and James Wathen and John Clifford, both of Swansea, had been dissolved. Sterry is by no

5 which he was probably the owner at some time during the l850s. Another concern with which he was involved was The Swansea Bank of The first directors were all connected with the coal and tinplate industries in the Swansea area and included such noted figures as John Jones Jenkins and John Glasbrook. The purpose of the bank appears to have been to channel funds into colliery and shipping ventures in which, in varying permutations, the bankls directors were involved. Sterry died at Malvern in 1876 at the comparatively young age of 53. He fell a victim to diphtheria. There is a brief, and not very informative, obituary in The Cambrian (4th August 1876). His memory is preserved in Gowerton by the name of Sterry Road, but of the Gorwydd Colliery and Elba works hardly a trace remains. Fatalities at the mine During the time that Sterry was owner of the Gorwydd there were, inevitably, a number of fatalities at the colliery and records have survived of these. They are of course interesting in their own right to a greater or lesser degree, but much more interesting are the discrepancies, some of them glaring, that can be found between the brief entry for each fatal accident in the annual reports of H. M. Inspector of Mines and the somewhat more detailed descriptions preserved in the accounts of the coroners' inquests in the pages of The Cambrian. The following cases can be cited by way of

6 example. In each case the entry from the Inspector's annual report is followed by the report of the inquest in The Cambrian. 1. "21 November Owners: Sterry & Padley. (Un-named victim, 12 years old.) Crushed against the top, riding on trams." (HMI) "A fatal accident occurred at the Gorwydd Colliery, the property of the Messrs.Padley, on Monday evening last, whereby a lad, only eleven years of age, named Harry Thomas, was killed upon the spot. The deceased was employed as a doorkeeper in No. Level, his duty being to open and shut a door to allow the waggons to pass on the underground incline from the workings at the bottom of the pit. As some trams were going up the incline a coupling chain suddenly broke, which caused the carriages to run back to the bottom of the slant. The deceased was knocked down, and some of the waggons going over his head, he was so severely injured that death was almost instantaneous. The inquest was held before Charles Collins, Esq., coroner on the 22nd inst. and a verdict or accidental death returned." (The Cambrian, 25th November 1859) Obviously the same incident is referred to in both these accounts, yet there are marked discrepancies. The age of the poor boy differs and hi North Gower miners, 1914.These men were photographed at the Penlan Colliery, Penclawdd {Grid Ref } but are representative of the workers of other Gower mines in this area. The names on the mount of the original are: John Howells, Oliver Jenkins, Joe Thomas, R. James Howells, Walter Howells, Thomas Howells, William Howells, William Howells (twice, sic), George

7 One mildly interesting, but not very important point about the entry for the Sterry family in the 1871 census enumerators' returns is that the age of his wife is given as 21. If that is true, then she was only 14 when she married Albert Sterry who was then 41. Was Henry Crawshay really so desperate to get rid of his daughter that he was prepared to see her married off to a small-time coalowner with social pretensions who was three times her age? Such things did happen, but perhaps the pompous Mr. Sterry thought it demeaning to allow the enumerator to know the age of his wife, and so the latter could do no more than enter "21" in the age column to indicate that she was apparently of age. It was probably in 1861 that Sterry bought out Padley and so became the sole owner of the Gorwydd. He remained in possession until his death in He played a significant part in the development of Gowerton, both through his investment in the local coal industry and through his ultimate responsibility for the Elba steelworks. The original Elba works was not a success. It was Sterry's own promotion but only lasted two years, However, that was enough to pave the way for the later, more successful concern of Sterry was also owner for a time of the Mynydd-bach-y-glo Colliery at Waunarlwydd. He bought it from W. P. Struve, the celebrated mining engineer, in 1864, only to sell it in about 1872 to the Landore Tinplate Co. Another of his collieries appears to have been the Alltwen, southwest of Gowerton, of

8 Jenkins, Joe Murley.name is apparently unknown to the Inspector. According to the inquest, it was not the ladls fault at all; yet the report of the Inspector, Thomas Evans,makes it very much his fault-he ought not to have been riding the trams and so it served him right if he was crushed to death. The two stories are so different that one of them must be wrong, and of the two, that in The Cambrian is more likely to be correct, having been written immediately afterthe inquest September Owner: A. Sterry. Victim: Harris, collier, 24. Killed by fallof roof. No rules. Penalty imposed by magistrate. II IIAn inquest was held on Monday at the Globe Inn, Loughor, on the body of Henry Harry, aged 16, who was suddenly killed by a fall of coal in the Alltwen colliery, Loughor, the property of Mr Alfred Sterry, on the previous Saturdayll (i.e. 14th September. P.R.R.). "A brother of the deceased deposed that he worked in the same stall and when they were clearing away some of the coal a large stone and also some coal from the roof suddenly fell, striking the deceased on the back of his head and covering him with coal-when taken out he was quite dead. The jury returned a verdict of Accidental Death. (We understand that the Government Inspector, Thomas Evans, Esq., has caused summonses to be issued against the owner of the colliery for a breach of The Mines Regulation Act)." (The Cambrian, 20th September 1861) Again there are a number of discrepancies, although obviously it is the same incident that is referred to in both accounts. First of all,

9 how old was the victim-16 or 24? And was his name Harry or Harris? Neither really matters very much now. Where did the accident occur? According to the Inspector, it took place at the Gorwydd, yet The Cambrian states Alltwen. Both collieries were the property of Sterry, and both were leased from the Dunraven Estate. Possibly they were being worked together as one concern, or perhaps Evans simply confused the two when he came to write his report. But assuming that the details in The Cambrian are correct, that makes three points of detail where Evans got it wrong, the name and age of the victim, and the place of the accident. It does make one wonder how conscientious he was over keeping accurate records-or indeed whether he kept any records at all, or merely jotted down the details of each incident with which he was connected from memory at the end of the day. The prosecution referred to in both sources was duly brought and heard in Swansea police court on 28th September Sterry was there in person to answer four charges: 1. Failure to provide a steam gauge for the winding engine boiler 2. Neglecting to display a copy of the general and special rules for the colliery in a prominent position 3. Paying workmen in a place other than that sanctioned by the rules 4. Not having a water gauge for the pumping engine. In addition an overman was summonsed for not having the main door of the workings made

10 double, and so jeopardising the ventilation system of the entire colliery (The Cambrian, 4th October 1861). Sterry pleaded guilty to all the charges. He explained that he had only recently bought the colliery and therefore did not hold himself morally responsible for its various failures to observe the letter of the law, although he did accept that he was legally responsible. In answer to the third charge,while admitting that he was guilty, he emphasised that he had never paid his men in either a public house or a truck shop-and it was this practice that the law was really intended to prevent. His plea for mitigation was accepted by the court and he was fined a nominal is. on each count plus costs. The overall tone of the proceedings appears to have been very friendly and informal IIchummy" might not be the wrong word. It appears from Evans' reports that at this period he was carrying out something of a campaign against small coalowners who were rather cavalier in their respect for the rules. On the same day as Sterry1s case was heard another prosecution came to court against the owner of the Lynch Colliery at Llanmorlais. If Evans was trying to tighten up, that would explain why he threw the book at Sterry by charging him with everything he could find, even though none of the charges were directly related to the death of Harris (or was it Harry?). He may have secured no more than a token judgement, but at least the prosecution served the purpose of letting Sterry and his like know that the Inspector had his eye on them.

11 3. "5 September Owner: Alfred Sterry. Victim: John Mandy, signal boy, 14.Riding on a rope on incline plane and fell off in front of the tram." (HMI.) IIAn inquest was held on the 6th inst., at the Star public house, in the parish of Swansea, before Edward Strick, Esq., Coroner, on the body of a boy named John Mainwaring, who was accidentally killed by being run over by tram waggons at the Mynydd-bach-y-Glo colliery. Robert Mainwaring, the brother of the deceased, in his evidence stated that the deceased, who was fourteen years of age, was employed at the colliery as a signal boy and witness as a switch boy. About 9 o'clock the previous morning they were at their work, and about a quarter of an hour after deceased called out to witness to stop, the trams being at that time drawn up the slant between witness and deceased. Witness pulled the wire, giving the signal, and the trams were stopped, and called out IIwhat's the matter", but received no answer. Witness then went down the slant, and saw deceased lying in the middle of the road. Witness called two or three times but received no reply. Witness then ran down farther for assistance, and met his father and another man, who carried deceased out of the slant-he did not speak. John Mainwaring, father of the deceased, corroborated the statement of his son, stating in addition that the left leg of the deceased was broken and his head and face much injured. A doctor came, but deceased was dead before he saw him. In witness's opinion, the deceased must have been riding on the rope

12 before the tram and fallen off, the trams passed over him-or he must havemissed his footing attempting to get on the rope; but deceased had no business to leave his post, and had often been cautioned against riding up. Verdict, "Accidental death" (The Cambrian, 8th September 1865). By 1865 Thomas Evans had been replaced as H. M. Inspector of Mines for South Wales by the appropriately named Thomas E. Wales. He appears to have made exactly the same kind of mistake in this case as his predecessor had in The coroner's inquest leaves one in no doubt that this accident took place at Mynydd-bach-y-glo Colliery, yet Wales, in his annual report, attributes it to the Gorwydd. Sterry had recently acquired Mynydd-bach-y-glo in addition to the Gorwydd, and Wales seems to have convinced himself that anything that happened at a colliery belonging to Sterry must have happened at the Gorwydd. The Gorwydd and Mynyddbach-y-glo adjoin one another, and under the common ownership of Sterry the workings may perhaps have been linked, but even so they remained separate collieries, as the report of the coroner's inquest, and as entries in Wales's reports for subsequent years make clear. It cannot be, therefore, that on Sterry's purchase of Mynydd-bach-y-glo he merged it with the Gorwydd, thus making Wales's entry technically correct. Quite simply the more likely answer is that the Inspector had confused two adjacent collieries that belonged to the same owner. There is also the question of the victim-was his name Mainwaring or Mandy? Mrs Margaret Morgan --

13 tells me that 'Mandy' is a local diminutive of 'Mainwaring' and that therefore the same person is in fact being referred to in both accounts. Presumably the 'Mandy' was used by the victim's father and brother when they were interviewed by Wales after the accident, even though the more correct version 'Mainwaring' was used on the more formal occasion of the coroner's inquest. That the Inspector, in his annual report, should not take the trouble to use the correct name of the victim reinforces that his note-taking and record-keeping was inclined to be a little on the casual side. 4. IIAn inquest was lately held at the Globe Inn, Loughor, before Edward Strick, Esq., Coroner, on the body of William Phillips, 2 years of age, employed as a hitcher at the Cefngorwydd Colliery. From the evidence it appeared that the deceased went down to the bottom of the shaft on the Friday morning previous at a quarter to six, his duty being to put the trams from the small trucks or trollies on to the carriage, to be hauled up to the pit's mouth, and on a signal from him being given to those above, the full trams ascended and the empties descended. No signal having been given for some time, the overman sent a man down to know the cause, and on his reaching the bottom, discovered deceased under the carriage with the empty trams; he was extricated but quite dead, and was ultimately brought to the surface and conveyed home. The doctor who saw him immediately he was brought up, said his neck was broken. Assuming the hitcher to be careful, the work is not dangerous. Verdict, "Accidentally killed

14 by a coal pit platform descending upon him. II (The Cambrian, 20th April 1866) One cannot compare the treatment of this incident by the Coroner and by the Inspector, for the simple reason that it is omitted completely by the latter from the list of fatal accidents in his report for Need one comment further? As well as these four accidents where the Coroner and the Inspector presented different versions of what took place, there are also cases where the two were in agreement. In August 1859 a 15 -year old collier, William Davies, was killed by a roof-fall, and further accidents of exactly the same nature occurred in July 1865 and January But even so, out of seven incidents in the period between 1859 and 1872, the Inspector's version agrees with that of the Coroner in less than half. To conclude this catalogue of mishaps, death and distress, there were two further events that merited a paragraph in the press of the day. In neither case are they mentioned by the Inspector, but this is quite in order since neither involved fatalities among workers at the colliery. In 1864 five youths from Sketty set out for a walk in the direction of Waunarlwydd and three of them were overcome by choke-damp escaping from an abandoned entrance to the Gorwydd. Sadly, it was entirely their own fault: there was a bar across the mouth and the entire area had been fenced off, but they broke through it and approached too close to the mouth of the mine. This little story appears in the L1anelly and County

15 Guardian, 14th July 1864, and I am indebted to Mrs Margaret Morgan for it.gas was presumably the cause of another incident, in 1871, when fire broke out in an abandoned part of the Five Foot Vein. Gowerton was aflame with rumours-the fire had extended to the entire workings and was raging with such violence that it would take months to extinguish it. In fact the panic reaction seems to have been quite unjustified. The fire was contained within the area where it had started and was put out, apparently without much trouble. It was possible to resume work within a week or two. Sterry was there in person to supervise the work of the fire-fighters (The Cambrian, 26th April 1872). The Gorwydd after Sterry After the death of Sterry in 1876 the Gorwydd Colliery remained in the hands of his executors until In that year ownership passed to William Harries & Co. However, Harries was the manager of the mine for Sterry1s executors, so it is not absolutely clear whether this means that Harries bought the colliery from the executors, or whether it simply means that the same owners were being described in a different way in the annual List of for this is because Harries & Co. appear to have fallen into arrears with the Mines.Harries & Co. continue to appear as owners of the Gorwydd until In 1888 the List of Mines gives no owner at all for the colliery. The reason rent and the lessors, the Dunraven Estate, repossessed the property. A sale was held in January 1888, under distress for rent, of material from the Gorwydd,

16 Elba and Alltwen collieries, all Dunraven collieries in the neighbourhood of Gowerton. A sale had already been held previously, in 1885, of material from the Elba and A11twen Collieries, following the bankruptcy of the lessee, A. Ll. Pearse, and these do not appear to have been worked since then. In other words, the 1888 sale was probably mainly of material for the Gorwydd, but the opportunity was taken of disposing of a few oddments that may have been left over from the earlier sale at the Elba. Following the 1888 sale the Gorwydd was relet to a new lessee, R. Evans of Gowerton, but his tenure was only a short one, for in September 1891 the colliery was abandoned, presumably because it had been exploited to the point where working it was no longer economic. Early in the twentieth century a short-lived attempt was made to re-work the Gorwydd at a time when the demand for coal was high, especially for the export market, and even small, quite marginal collieries could be made to pay. In about 1902 a company known as the New Gorwydd Colliery was formed and they opened a slant on the opposite side of the railway to the original colliery. In 1909 this firm was bought out by a Llanelli company which continued to trade under the original name. The new owners intended to open new slants and increase output to 300 tons a day but whether they achieved very much is doubtful. They worked until 1914 when they went into voluntary liquidation. Probably there was just not enough coal left that could be extracted economically.

17 That marks the end of the history of the Gorwydd as a working colliery,but there is one final episode that provides a little human interest. Some time during the 1930s or 1940s an English tramp, known as Jac the Navvy,and his dog set up home in the woods that were now growing up on the site. Jac died in the woods, but his faithful dog would not desert him and pined away at his side. Jac still lives on in local folk memory and there are perhaps other tales to be told of him. For this little story, I am again indebted to Margaret Morgan. Conclusion This then is the story of Gowerton's Gorwydd Colliery. The history of the pit itself is ordinary enough. It was not the scene of any startling technological advances nor of any devastating catastrophes. It continued altogether for sixty or so years with a suooession of owners and with periods of activity alternating with periods of inactivity in a way that was typical of many small Victorian collieries. The most interesting point to emerge from a consideration of its history is the marked divergence between the reports of the coroners' inquests, published in the press a few days after they had taken place, and the summary of fatal accidents compiled by the Inspectors of Mines each year. One cannot escape the conclusion that the Inspectors,both Thomas Evans and Thomas Wales, had a somewhat casual attitude to record-keeping. This is not to belittle the work and achievements of the Inspectorate, which did a great deal to improve safety standards in

18 the mines, but it does suggest that the meticulous taking of notes and writing of reports was not one of their strong points. It would be interesting to extend this study to a wider range of collieries and over a greater expanse of time to see whether the same differences continue to be observable between the Inspectors' reports and the coroners' inquests.