Brug Colliery

Overview

Brug Colliery was a drift mine west of Merthyr Tydfil worked by Thomas' Merthyr Colliery Company from about 1925 to 1942, employing up to 199 men in the Nine-Feet, Bute and Four-Feet steam coal seams before closing at Nationalisation in 1947.

History

Thomas' Merthyr Colliery Company worked Brug as a drift mine to the west of Merthyr Tydfil from about 1925. Under manager John Davies it employed 167 men underground and 21 on the surface in 1930, growing to 178 men in 1931 and 199 in 1933. In 1934 it employed 170 men underground and 22 on the surface, working the Nine-Feet, Bute and Four-Feet steam coal seams. Employment stood at 188 in 1940-42. It closed on the Nationalisation of the coal industry in 1947. The British Geological Survey's district memoir for Merthyr Tydfil describes all three of these seams in the same district: the Nine-Feet (known locally as the Big Vein) as the most important and most extensively worked coal in the area; the Bute (locally the Peacock or Brass) as good quality and widely worked; and the Four-Feet as a complex seam known locally as the Stwrin. The memoir does not name Brug Colliery itself.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Brug Colliery, worked by Thomas' Merthyr Colliery Company from about 1925, employed up to 199 men in 1933 and worked the Nine-Feet, Bute and Four-Feet seams; it closed at Nationalisation in 1947. ¹
• The Nine-Feet, Bute and Four-Feet seams that Brug worked are, respectively, the district's most important and most extensively worked coal, a widely worked good-quality seam, and a complex seam known locally as the Stwrin. ²

Sources

1. (secondary) Small Collieries around Merthyr Tydfil — Northern Mine Research Society
2. (primary) Geology of the South Wales Coalfield, Part V, the country around Merthyr Tydfil (Memoir, Sheet 231) — British Geological Survey

Record created: 15 September 2026 · Last researched: 16 September 2026