Llanfairfach Colliery

Fictional record. This page describes a mine from a fictional setting, not a real place. Information is based on the cited canon, with adaptations and interpretation distinguished where necessary. It is kept separate from the real MineArchive corpus — see Fictional.

Also known as	The Llanfairfach pit
Setting	Doctor Who (BBC)
Location	Llanfairfach, a mining village in South Wales — 'post-industrial Glamorgan', in the transcript's own stage direction — with the Global Chemicals refinery and its slag heap immediately alongside. Filmed at the real Ogilvie Colliery near Deri, Caerphilly.
Type	Coal
Worked	Not given. The pit is long-established when the story opens; only its closing is dated. – Closed by the National Coal Board 'last year' — that is, 1972 to the story's 1973 present — on the grounds that coal was a dying industry.
Extent	A shaft mine with a cage lift, an engine house, a pithead office and worked-out roadways; deeper in, a natural shaft and a vast lake of green slime. No depths or dimensions are given.

Overview

The closed South Wales pit at the centre of Doctor Who's 'The Green Death' (1973): shut by the Coal Board a year before the story opens, its workings quietly used as a dump by the oil refinery that replaced it, and its former miners the first to die of what came back up.

History

Llanfairfach colliery has been closed, says the notice on the gate at the very start of the serial, and the story turns on what that closure did to the village. Stevens, director of the Global Chemicals plant that has taken the pit's place as the valley's employer, addresses a hostile crowd on exactly that point: 'When the National Coal Board were forced to close the pit last year' — a heckler answers 'It were a shame, that was' — 'No, my friends, we must not be bitter. We must face the facts. Coal is a dying industry. Oil is our future now and the government agrees with me.' The men do not accept it. The former miners are still at the colliery through the story, drinking tea in the pithead office and arguing about what killed one of their own; when Evans announces he is going down, and is told it could be dangerous, he answers 'I've spent twenty years of my life down there. Think it scares me now?' It is a portrait of a workforce that has lost its pit but not its habits, still turning up at a place that has stopped paying them. What has changed underground is that Global Chemicals has been pumping its waste down into the old workings. Ted Hughes, a miner who goes down, comes back up glowing green and dies at the pithead siren. Stevens tells the Brigadier that nobody should go down the mine and that it must be sealed off completely; the Brigadier makes investigating it his first priority instead. Jo Grant descends with the miner Bert to reach Dai Evans, who is already dying and turning green at the bottom; the cage falls, the telephone wire by the shaft breaks with it, and they are cut off. Deeper in they find a lake of luminous green slime and the maggots breeding in it, and at the head of a natural shaft a pipe running back to the refinery, its inside coated with crude oil waste.

Workings

Reached by a cage lift from the pithead, with an engine house and pithead office at the surface and a telephone at the shaft bottom. Beyond the worked-out roadways the mine connects to natural cavities — the green lake and a natural shaft that the refinery's waste pipe discharges into. An emergency shaft provides the only way out once the cage has fallen.

Closure

Closed by the National Coal Board the year before the story, part of the run-down of the South Wales coalfield; the closure is presented as an economic and political decision rather than a geological one, and as the thing that made the village dependent on Global Chemicals in the first place.

What became of it

Standing derelict at the time of the story, with a slag heap alongside from which the maggots later emerge, and with the refinery's waste discharging into the abandoned workings.

Canon & adaptations

None found. The serial is the only source for the colliery, and later novelisation and reference works follow it.

Recorded claims

Each claim is marked with its basis — explicit canon, MineArchive inference, adaptation only, or fandom interpretation — and attached to the source(s) below. Where tellings disagree, both are kept.

The serial's own stage direction opens the story with 'Llanfairfach colliery has been closed, says the notice on the gate, but underground a scared man is making his way along one of the worked out roadways'. (explicit canon)
Stevens of Global Chemicals tells the villagers 'When the National Coal Board were forced to close the pit last year... Coal is a dying industry. Oil is our future now and the government agrees with me.' (explicit canon)
Professor Jones and Jo Grant deduce that Global Chemicals is pumping its waste down into the old mine workings, and the Doctor's party later finds a pipe at the head of a natural shaft with crude oil waste inside it. (explicit canon)
The former miners are still at the colliery after the closure; challenged that going down is dangerous, Evans answers 'I've spent twenty years of my life down there. Think it scares me now?' (explicit canon)
Stevens tells the Brigadier 'I think it imperative that nobody should go down the mine. It must be sealed off completely', and the Brigadier replies that he intends to make investigating it his first priority. (explicit canon)
The colliery used for filming was Ogilvie Colliery near Deri, Caerphilly, and Global Chemicals was the RCA International factory in Brynmawr. (explicit canon)

Sources

(interpretation) The Green Death — Wikipedia
(primary canon) The Green Death — camera script transcript, Doctor Who season 10 story 5 (1973) — The Doctor Who Transcripts (chakoteya.net)

Record created: 6 September 2026 · Last researched: 6 September 2026