TRIMSARANS TRAGIC CENTENARY

- 29 November 2007

As flames flickered in the hearth of my maternal grandfather's Trimsaran home, along Heol Morlais, he would occasionally tell me in Welsh of the not-so-good old days.Of his seeking work in the late 1890s and mining coal at Trimsaran Colliery before he had enough saved to begin life with his wife and growing family on Tycoch Farm.

The memory came back recently when a friend showed me unpublished pictures of the mining tragedy my grandfather, at the age of 22, witnessed as an unforgettable tragedy for the village.

The whole district was thrown into a state of consternation on Saturday last, at the news of the awful calamity at the Trimsaran Colliery." Llanelli's Mercury, dated February 21, 1907, captioned: 'Crash in Mine: Runaway Truck Causes Havoc: Some Miraculous Escapes.' At the time Waunhir, balanced midway down Mynydd Pembre, employed more than 125 men and boys. It was one of three drift mines forming the Trimsaran Colliery Company - Caedean and the Upper Slant completing the trinity. Some 250 men and boys were employed in total. Waunhir colliers produced around 200 tonnes of anthracite daily, with attendant stone boulders from fractured and fissured Green, Yard, Two Feet and Gregog coal seams.

On Saturday, February 16, 1907, as a full set of mining drams were hauled to the drift exit, a coupling plate broke. The heavy trucks hurtled back down the mine, crashing and smashing their way against props. The young men at the base of the rail track ran for their lives. For six it was too late. Doctor Howells, Trimsaran's GP (paid by weekly contributions from local colliers and brickworkers) was quickly at the scene after hearing the pit hooter blast out. He was met by the village policeman, Constable Rees, who phoned from his Heol Morlais home for additional help from Dr Thomas Griffiths of Kidwelly, and Dr Roderick, of Llanelli.

From hellish darkness and chocking dust in the slant, an eyewitness told a local reporter: "The injured ones were able to benefit from prompt medical attention, and it was pathetic to hear the poor fellows, in all their pain, murmur their appreciation of what the medical staff, thus hurriedly called together, had done for them." Constable Rees "rendered all the aid within his power".

The six crushed to death by the drams and their cascading loads were aged 18, 19, 19, 23, 24 and 34. Women and children waited for the bodies to be drawn up.

Two years later, four men died in an explosion in the Caedean section of the Trimsaran mine.

The greatest loss of life at the colliery was on April 26, 1923; a journey dram taking miners to the surface broke some 300 yards up the slant. Twelve men died and dozens were injured. The funeral cortge stretched for a quarter of a mile. Thanks to years of effort by Ronnie Rees, of Pontyates, an ex-collier at Pentremawr and Cynheidre, these century-old photographs survive as a vivid glimpse of the fearful hardships ordinary Trimsaran men, women and children suffered for the unearthing of diamond coal.

Credit - Copyright Author Keith J Evans

Photographs kindly sent to us by Keith J Evans, Thank you.