Cribbwr Fawr Colliery

Overview

One of the most southerly collieries in the South Wales coalfield, west of Kenfig Hill, worked by slants rather than shafts for house and manufacturing coal. Its workings stopped dead against the Newlands Thrust and it closed around 1935.

History

Cribbwr Fawr was owned in 1884 by Williams and Davies and managed by L. W. Lewis. The Cribbwr Fawr Colliery Company, of Wind Street in Swansea, belonged to the Monmouthshire and South Wales Coal Owners Association and sold through G. E. Llewellyn and Company.

In mid January 1887 an explosion killed the overman, Mr Habakkuk, and the manager was fined £20 for allowing gas to accumulate in a mine worked with naked lights.

The colliery was worked by slants driven into the hillside: No. 1 into the Upper-Nine-Feet seam and No. 2 into the Lower-Nine-Feet. It employed 371 men in 1908 and 592 by 1913. By 1923 a third slant had been opened and No. 2 discontinued: 107 men worked underground at No. 1 on the 20-inch and Fawr seams, 563 at No. 3 on the Siatot, Nine Feet, Five Quarter and Cribwr Fawr seams, and 118 surface workers supplied both. No. 1 slant stopped producing in 1928 and the colliery closed around 1935.

Two men died together on 12 August 1909: David Thomas, forty-six, married with three children, and Owen Davies, twenty-four, electrocuted when they touched an electric cable in the main slant on their way to work (see Disasters, below).

Geology

The colliery worked the southern rim of the South Wales coalfield west of Kenfig Hill — one of the most southerly workings in it. The named seams are the Upper and Lower Nine Feet, the 20-inch, the Fawr, the Siatot, the Five Quarter and the Cribwr Fawr. The workings were limited to the north by the huge geological fault known as the Newlands Thrust, which is the fact that shaped the mine: a colliery hemmed in by structure rather than by lease.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (well documented example)

Workings

Three slants driven into the hillside rather than shafts. No. 1 went into the Upper-Nine-Feet seam and No. 2 into the Lower-Nine-Feet; by 1923 a No. 3 slant had opened and No. 2 had been discontinued. The Margam Slant was worked as part of the colliery.

Closure

No. 1 slant ceased production in 1928 and the colliery closed around 1935. A conflicting account has it closing through flooding about 1918, which is hard to square with its being returned as working in the 1920s and 1932.

Related mines

• Newlands Colliery — Newlands was opened in 1918 by the Cribbwr Fawr company and worked along with Cribbwr Fawr Colliery; its abandonment plans are titled for both.

Disasters & major incidents

• Cribbwr Fawr Colliery electrocution, 1909
  12 August 1909 · Machinery · 2 fatalities
  On 12 August 1909 two colliers at Cribbwr Fawr Colliery, near Porthcawl, were killed by a live power cable on the main slant. The younger, stepping off the carriage that had carried the men down, steadied himself on the cable and was fatally shocked; David Thomas, walking down afterwards, was found dead further up. The cable's armour had been made live by damage from runaway trams and poor earthing.
• Cribbwr Fawr Colliery roof fall, 1918
  18 June 1918 · Collapse / Roof Fall · 2 fatalities

  A rider and his boy assistant were buried by a heavy fall of roof while riding a journey at Cribbwr Fawr Colliery, Pyle, on 18 June 1918.

  At about 7.15 on the morning of Tuesday 18 June 1918 John Henry Davies, a rider of 21 from Neath who had recently married, and his assistant rider, Arthur Rowland Williams of North Cornelly, a boy of 14 or 15, were riding a journey at Cribbwr Fawr Colliery near Pyle when a heavy fall of roof buried them both and killed them on the spot. The fall, of some 15 to 20 tons, came after derailed drams knocked out timber.

• Cribbwr Fawr roof fall, 1925
  13 November 1925 · Collapse / Roof Fall · 2 fatalities

  Two assistant repairers at Cribbwr Fawr Colliery, near Pyle, were buried by a fall of roof on 13 November 1925 while repairing a double parting.

  On 13 November 1925 Henry Lewis and Ernest C. Watkins, both 41-year-old assistant repairers, were repairing a double parting at Cribbwr Fawr Colliery when the roof fell and completely buried them. Both were killed.

What's uncertain

Points where sources disagree or the record could not be settled; both accounts are kept. All open questions in the archive.

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Cribbwr Fawr' (catalogue SWR1304, Five Feet (Nive Feet), dated 1930); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain) ³

Recorded claims

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

• In 1884 the mine was owned by Williams and Davies and managed by L. W. Lewis; the Cribbwr Fawr Colliery Company, based at Wind Street in Swansea, was a member of the Monmouthshire and South Wales Coal Owners Association and used G. E. Llewellyn and Company as its sales agents. ¹
• An explosion in mid January 1887 killed the overman, Mr Habakkuk, and the manager was fined £20 for allowing an accumulation of gas in a mine worked with naked lights. ¹
• The No. 1 slant was driven into the Upper-Nine-Feet seam and the No. 2 slant into the Lower-Nine-Feet; the workings were limited to the north by the huge geological fault known as the Newlands Thrust. ¹
• By 1923 a new No. 3 slant had been opened and No. 2 discontinued: 107 men worked underground at No. 1 on the 20-inch and Fawr seams, 563 at No. 3 on the Siatot, Nine Feet, Five Quarter and Cribwr Fawr seams, and a further 118 surface workers supplied both. ¹
• The colliery employed 371 men in 1908 and 592 by 1913. No. 1 slant ceased production in 1928 and the colliery closed around 1935. ¹
• The Durham Mining Museum's transcription of the Lists of Mines returns the colliery from the 1890s onward, with its coal types, its employment above and below ground and the seams worked, and carries the names and circumstances of those killed there. ²
• Cribbwr Fawr Colliery, which included the Margam Slant, was worked for house and manufacturing coals to the west of Kenfig Hill and was one of the most southerly mines of the coalfield. ¹
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Cribbwr Fawr' (catalogue SWR1304, Five Feet (Nive Feet), dated 1930); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain) ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Cribwr Fawr — Welsh Coal Mines
2. (primary) Cribbwr Fawr Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
3. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans: CRIBBWR FAWR — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority

Record created: 10 September 2026 · Last researched: 10 September 2026