The price of coal

Reaching out under Swansea Bay from Blackpill are the workings of a colliery drowned when the sea broke through into the galleries.  The owners denied that certain men had lost their lives and refused the families compensation.  Years later high tides caused the water level to rise up the old shaft in Clyne Valley, bringing with it several skeletons from the old workings.

Details of the accident are scant and I need to do some more research, but I’m guessing the accident happened around 1870 because in 1943 a local poet called John Beynon wrote the following:

AN OLD LIE OUT

We had no time to pray

who shared poverty and were brave:

a  row of faces, hung ballons,

in the darkness as the roof split

lengthwise, squashed under its hammer,

a soft melon to the forged wall

of water we could not see

but had, unwillingly, to obey:

we rolled unconscious, already drowned.

 

They closed the pit and a mile inland

seventy years later the sea rose up

the crumbled shaft and burst

over the long grass and lay

our bones in homage under a drying sun,

to kindle, not disown:

how we would have laughed to see

the flash of windscreens and curious eyes

as we were spat out, one by one,

the rank earth repelling all their lies

and our voiceless anger gloriously sown.