Cefn Coed Colliery Museum

Cefn Coed Colliery Museum

Cefn Coed Colliery
Location within Neath Port Talbot
Location	Crynant, Neath Port Talbot, Wales
Coordinates	51°42′52″N 3°45′33″W / 51.714493°N 3.759142°W / 51.714493; -3.759142
Type	Mining museum
Owner	Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council
Website	Cefn Coed Colliery Museum

Cefn Coed Colliery Museum is a former coal mine, now operating as a museum. It is located at Crynant near Neath in the South Wales Valleys.

Coal mining in the Neath area began with the development of the port of Neath in the 16th century. In 1743 Herbert Mackworth began mining at Onllwyn, with production rising with the opening of the Neath and Brecon Railway in 1864. David Bevan opened a pit at Blaendulais in 1872, naming it the Seven Sisters after his seven daughters. The Evans-Bevan family then began exploiting the Swansea Valley from the 1870s, and by nationalisation in 1947 owned seven collieries within seven miles of each other.

Cefn Coed Colliery was opened as an anthracite colliery by the Llwynonn Colliery Company during the 1920s. Three attempts were unsuccessfully made to sink shafts at Cefn Coed, but it was not until the Llwynonn Colliery company was bought out by the Amalgamated Anthracite Combine of Ammanford in 1926 and high capital investment made, that a break was made in the hard Blue Pennant sandstone. The first coal raised in 1930, with the shaft and workings powered by a steam engine, fueled by the gas from the old workings.

Like much of western South Wales coalfield, the coal was high quality anthracite. The best coal came from the deepest seam called Big Vein, broken into at a depth of 750 yards. Cefn Coed during its working life at depths of over 2,500 feet (800m), was the deepest anthracite mine in the world. Other seams worked at Cefn Coed included: Peacock, White Four Feet and the Nine Feet. Brammallite was identified in the Dulais seam, by X-ray diffraction by the Natural History Museum, London; making Cefn Coed one of only two sites in all of Wales for Brammallite. However, at such depths and with frequent mining accidents due to methane gas and roof falls, the pit and it soon gained the unenviable nickname of "The Slaughterhouse."