Open questions: Carmarthenshire

Where sources disagree, MineArchive keeps both accounts rather than picking one; where a fact could not be settled, the record says so. 53 such claims on 24 records. All regions.

Blaenau Saron Colliery

• Welsh Coal Mines' fatalities register independently records the same death — Thomas Davies, 23, collier, killed on 7 May 1879 by falling under trams on an underground incline at Llandybie — but attributes it to "Glynea Colliery" rather than Blaenau Saron; the identical name, age, date, cause and village make it very likely the same event under a differently recorded colliery name. (disputed)
• A Mining Remediation Authority plan groups Saron, Park Level, Old Blaenau, Lletty Gwyn and other Llandybie workings in the Nine Feet and Gellideg anthracite seams; 'Old Blaenau' may be this level, but the plan does not say so. (uncertain)

Blaenhirwaun Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum records six lives lost. Welsh Coal Mines records five — John Davies, Norris Howells, Thomas Richard Morris and William Henry Richards killed in the initial blast and David Pennington dead some weeks later of severe burns — with thirteen others injured and some badly burnt. (disputed)

Bodyst Uchaf Colliery

• An independent local account of the same 1890 episode names the site Bodyst Isaf rather than Bodyst Uchaf, but otherwise matches in every particular: Henry Herbert sank the mine in 1890, sold it to a Lancashire syndicate trading as the Ammanford Colliery Company Ltd (£40,000 share capital), who closed it and opened a new slant on Glyn-cywrch Farm land, working the same Red Vein seam, known as Ammanford No.1 Colliery or "Top Works". (disputed)

Brynamman Colliery

• After a new entrance in 1894 it may have become Ynysdawella; leased to Edward Lange 1900-05; worked as Ynysamman by the Ynys Amman Colliery Co 1909-14. (uncertain)

Brynglas Colliery

• The colliery was abandoned on 3 July 1993. (disputed)
• The Red Vein workings were abandoned on 3 August 1993. (disputed)

Caepontbren Colliery

• The mine closed in 1913. (disputed)

Caerbryn Colliery

• Welsh Coal Mines gives 69 men at the No. 2 Slant, working the Rock, Green and Yard, and 160 at the New (No. 3) Slant in the Pumpquart and Stanllyd in 1923, with the pit having ceased production. (disputed)
• The mine-plans catalogue holds a Caerbryn abandonment plan for a Wenallt seam dated 31 March 1960. (uncertain)

Cawdor Colliery

• 1923: 401 underground and 77 surface; 1930: 499 men, although the Colliery Guardian of April 1930 said it had been closed for three years. (disputed)
• Old maps show Cawdor Colliery at SN 675 114, with an air shaft near Pen-y-waun and a tramway down to Glanamman; the compiler calls it 'Old Cawdor' and thinks Garnant Colliery was at some point called 'New Cawdor'. (uncertain)
• NMRS gives the original slant at 076115 and the 1896 opening, also called North Amman, at 092115; neither is a valid six-figure reference as printed. (uncertain)

Cwmgwili Colliery

• In 1972 the NCB merged Cwmgwili with the old Lindsay Colliery at a cost of £150,000. (disputed)
• In 1970 a £170,000 scheme merged the two mines. (disputed)
• Officially closed in the early 1980s but 21 men worked pillar and stall until 1992; after UK Consolidated Mining, Coal Investments and a failed Jewel Limited buy-out it really closed on 21 November 1996. (disputed)
• It was closed by British Coal in 1980 but kept working under Coal Investments plc; production ceased in 1994. (disputed)

Dolaucothi Gold Mines

• A small quantity of gold from Dolaucothi was reportedly used in commemorative items for Prince George's 1934 wedding. (uncertain)
• Archaeological evidence suggests gold extraction at Dolaucothi may have begun as Bronze Age washing of gold-bearing gravels along the River Cothi, predating the Roman hushing and underground operation. (uncertain)

Garnant Colliery

• The Welsh Coal Mines colliery page states that ten men were killed and names exactly ten, and the Cwmamman History site dedicated to the disaster is titled in memory of the ten. The Welsh Coal Mines list of Welsh mining disasters gives 18 for the same date. (disputed)
• The colliery was known as Pwll Perkins after Perkins and Sons, at one time its owners, and was later purchased by David Pugh, MP, chief shareholder of the Garnant Colliery Company. (uncertain)
• A waterwheel produced the power for the colliery. (uncertain)
• By 1908 the owner was Cawdor and Garnant Collieries Ltd of Garnant, with 69 men working underground and 33 on the surface. The Gors y Garnant pit closed in 1912. (uncertain)

Gellyceidrim Colliery

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Gellyceidrim' (catalogue 9399, Big, dated 1927); 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)

Genwen Colliery

• The Nevills deepened the shafts to 318 feet in the 1860s; the pit closed in 1866 and remained closed for over 30 years until David Harry reopened it in 1897; 69 men were employed in 1900. (disputed)
• The colliery fell out of use from the mid-1820s until the Llanelly Copperworks Company installed a new engine and deepened the pit, working it until 1907. (disputed)

Glanamman Colliery

• It was shut on 31 January 1948 with 300 men, one of the old Swansea Area slants the NCB chose to close. (disputed)
• NMRS statistics give 116 men in 1947 and 119 in 1948. (disputed)

Glanmwrwg Colliery

• The shaft was 56 yards deep in 1872. The Glanmwrwg Colliery Company's own mines at St David's and Penprys were closed in 1908. (uncertain)

Glynmoch Colliery

• The Dragon Coal Corporation took over in 1997 and the mine closed for good on 31 May 2000. (disputed)
• E. S. Morris of Gloucester was the licensee in 2000, and the mine was not listed in 2003. (disputed)
• Between 1950 and 1990 it employed between ten and twenty-five men, thirty-seven in 1987; reserves were given as 276,000 tonnes in 1964. (uncertain)
• Entrances recorded at SN 660129 (No. 1 or Ystrad; fan drift and fan shaft) and 655123 (No. 2 or Bodyst), with old shafts at 656125, 655123 and 654122; Bodyst first hauled coal in 1971. (uncertain)
• In 1979 the owner of Ystrad was prosecuted by the Inspector of Mines and Quarries and fined 2,800 pounds. (uncertain)
• A Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan (SWR1467) titled 'Glynmoch' records the Red Vein; the catalogue entry gives no location, and another Glynmoch (with Abergorky, in the Rhondda) also appears in the catalogue. (uncertain)

Gorsgoch Colliery

• NMRS gives Gorsgoch a Brynamman grid reference (706132), but its association with Cross Hands and its plans shared with Emlyn Colliery point to the Gors-goch area near Penygroes; the position is left unset. (disputed)

Gwendraeth Colliery

• Twenty-six men and boys died in the inundation of 10 May 1852. Contemporary reporting puts 27 on the night shift with a single survivor, David Evans, which reconciles with the figure of 26 dead; some later summaries instead give 27 lives lost, apparently by counting the whole shift as fatalities. (disputed)
• The colliery reopened after the disaster and was listed as working in 1869, closing at some point during the 1870s. No source gives a precise closure date. (uncertain)
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Gwendraeth' (catalogue 9571, Carway Fawr, dated 1928); 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)

New Dynant Colliery

• It closed around the time of nationalisation in 1947, with 18 men. (disputed)
• It was closed by the NCB in 1952. (disputed)

Noyadd Colliery

• In 1907-08 it employed 111 men underground and 18 at the surface. (disputed)
• The 1908 list of mines gives 111 underground and 28 surface workers. (disputed)
• NMRS locates the mine at Brynamman, Amman Valley, grid reference 700133; the Cwmgors history says it was presumably somewhere between Garnant and Lower Brynamman but could not find it on old maps. (uncertain)
• Noyadd was a sister mine to Glangarnant; NMRS says it was possibly part of, or the same mine as, Glangarnant. (uncertain)

Old Castle Colliery

• The main shaft was some 95 fathoms deep. (disputed)
• The shaft was 90 fathoms deep, and the collieries, the most extensive in Carmarthenshire, produced over 200,000 tons of coal a year. (disputed)

Rhos Amman Colliery

• On 4 January 1924 an explosion killed seven men resting between shifts in a hut where there was gelignite and an open fire; a memorial stands on the recreation ground that now occupies the site. (disputed)
• The seven were killed at 11.30pm in a tin cabin near the mouth of a new slant being driven after the old colliery was abandoned; 10 lb of gunpowder was in the cabin and may have been thawed at the fire. (disputed)

Tir-y-Dail Colliery

• Tir-y-dail Colliery closed in 1927, one of many Amman Valley collieries closed after the defeat of the 1926 General Strike. (disputed)
• NMRS records the Lower Pumpquart abandoned in September 1927 but the colliery still working other seams in 1927-30, with 512 men in 1930, and closed before 1947. (disputed)

Trimsaran Colliery

• J. M. Carey's report on the 1923 accident gives the main slant as 1,350 yards on that date. Welsh Coal Mines, following the contemporary newspaper account, gives 1,400 yards. (disputed)
• Welsh Coal Mines and the Trimsaran Community Council both put the colliery under Amalgamated Anthracite Ltd by 1931, employing about 700 men; the Durham Mining Museum lists the owners as the Trimsaran Colliery Co. Ltd, Welsh Anthracite Collieries Ltd and Henderson's Welsh Anthracite Collieries Ltd before the National Coal Board, without dates. The two are compatible: Amalgamated Anthracite absorbed the Welsh anthracite companies in this period. (uncertain)