Dandeme Colliery

Overview

Dandeme Colliery worked in the latter half of the 19th century as one of the mines feeding the Plymouth Iron Works, Merthyr Tydfil, an ironworks founded in 1763 on land leased from the Earl of Plymouth and built by Anthony Bacon.

History

The NMRS records only that Dandeme was worked in the latter half of the 19th century by the Plymouth Iron Company, without giving the mine its own operating dates, output or named deaths. What is well documented is the company above it. In 1763 Isaac Williams (so NMRS; Wikipedia and other standard accounts name the ironmaster Isaac Wilkinson, almost certainly the same lease and likely a transcription slip in one source or the other) and John Guest agreed a 99-year lease on land belonging to the Earl of Plymouth at Merthyr Tydfil. They did not develop the site, and in 1765 sub-leased it to Anthony Bacon, who built the Plymouth Iron Works; both NMRS and Wikipedia agree on this date and on Bacon's death in 1786. Bacon's son Thomas leased the works on to Richard Hill, whose family firm, Hill's Plymouth Company, continued to work the surrounding mining interests long after the ironworks itself closed: Wikipedia and NMRS agree the works passed to Fothergill, Hankey and Bateman on Anthony Hill's death in 1862 and closed in the 1880s, but per NMRS the colliery side employed 3,000 miners as late as 1907, before D. R. Llewellyn bought out the mining interests in 1927 to form Llewellyn (Plymouth) Limited. Dandeme itself is not distinguished within this by name beyond being one of the collieries worked under this ownership; no second, mine-specific source has been found.

Recorded claims

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

• Dandeme was worked in the latter half of the 19th century by the Plymouth Iron Company. ¹
• The Plymouth Iron Works was built by Anthony Bacon from 1765 on a 99-year lease of land belonging to the Earl of Plymouth, and the company's mining interests continued long after the ironworks itself closed in the 1880s. ^1,2

Sources

1. (secondary) Small Collieries around Merthyr Tydfil — Northern Mine Research Society
2. (secondary) Plymouth Ironworks — Wikipedia

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