History of Coal Mining in the Bryncoch Area

Map of the Mines in the Bryncoch Neath Area

The first Quaker coal lease at Neath was taken out in 1806, when George Croker Fox, Peter Price and others, who had previously acquired the Neath Abbey Ironworks in 1792, leased the Dyffryn estate minerals and formed the Neath Abbey Coal Co.  In that year, 1806. Pwll Mawr, Bryncoch, was sunk for the company by William Kirkhouse, and was reported to be the deepest pit in the country at that time (200 yards)

In 1854 the Neath Abbey Coal Co. operated the Bryncoch, Bryndewi and Main Collieries in the Bryncoch area, and the Pwllfaron Colliery at Aberpergwm.  The company continued in operation until the death of Isaac Redwood in 1873, after which the property was sold to Messrs. Batters and Scott.  From the lists of mines, however, it appears that by 1870 the Bryncoch Colliery had ceased operations, the Bryndewi and Main Collieries were under the ownership of the Dyffryn Main Colliery Co., and remained so until 1874 when a new company, the Dynevor, Dyffryn and Neath Abbey United Collieries Co. was formed.  This company had then under its control not only the Bryndewi and the Main or Dyffryn Main, as it became know, but also the Brithdir and Cwmdu Collieries of the former Dynevor Coal Co. and the Greenway Drift of the old Neath Abbey Coal Co.; in addition the new company was listed as owning the Fire Engine pit, Bryncoch.  

The title of the United Company had changed again by 1880 to the Dynevor Coal Co., operating the Court Herbert, Bryndewi, Old Birthdir, Cwmdu, West Birthdir, Fire Engine, Maes Melin and Dyffryn Main Collieries.  All except the last named were under one manager.  In 1888, only Brithdir, Court Herbert, Bryndewi and Dyffryn Main were working, and the title of the company had been changed to Dynevor Dyffryn Colliery Co. The collieries employed 696 men between them, the largest being Court Herbert with 263, which worked the Graigola and Victoria Seams. By 1895, the owning company had become the Main Colliery Co. and its collieries included the Brithdir employing 165, Court Herbert with 249, the Dyffryn Main No1 (Sunk in 1892) with 312, Tir Edmund (formerly Bryndewy) with 183 and Waunceirch employing 29.  The latter was located to the south of Bryncoch and continued to exploit the area formerly worked by the Fire Engine Pit which was abandoned in 1882

In 1897, a new General Manager, R. Vaughan Price, took over the management of the Main Colliery Co., which had been on the verge of liquidation.  The company took on a new lease of life, new pits were sunk and existing ones modernised.  Between 1897 and 1901 only the Nos. 1 and 2 Main at Bryncoch and the Court Herbert Pit near Neath Abbey were in operation, and these were connected by a narrow gauge tram road with the Great Western Railway and the shipping wharves on the Neath River.  In 1908, however, the tram road was superseded by a standard gauge railway, and wagons were brought direct to the collieries, which were modernised, and efficient screening plants where erected.  The shipping straithes on the river were also equipped for dealing with railway wagons.  In 1901 the No. 6 Main Pit, formerly the Dyffryn Main, Bryncoch, was restarted, working the Wernffraith Seam.  The Nos. 3 and 4 Main Pits working the Hughes Seam, from which output of over 900 tons per day was obtained, and the Nos. 7 and 8 Main Pits, working the Graigola and Victoria seams, were sunk at Skewen.  As far as can be ascertained the Nos. 3 and 4 Pits were sunk between 1901 and 1904; the Nos. 7 and *, which lay alongside the Tennant Canal below Neath Abbey, were listed as 'sinking' in 1910.  The incline from Nos. 1 and 2 Main Pits came down between the Nos. 7 and 8 Pits on the way to the shipping wharves and the main line railway.

In 1908, all the Main Collieries were electrified by the provision of a generating plant at the No. 1 Main.  Also at this pit, which was 1,360 feet deep, and whose output reached 1,400 tons per day, the underground haulage was modernised by provision of endless rope haulage.  By means of this and other economies, the total cost of production, including loading on to vessels at the wharves, was at the time as little as 4s.9d per ton, then one of the lowest costs obtained for many years in the South Wales Coalfield.

Between 1897 and 1918, the Main Collieries produced over eight million tons of coal, and employed an average of around 2,000 men for a period.  The company's activities began to decline in 1921, and by 1927 the No. 7 Main was stopped, Nos. 3 and 4 employed only 23, and the manpower of No. 1 was down to 112.  Their New Wernddu Slant, however, had been re-opened. and 231 men were employed there, working the Victoria Seam.  Court Herbert was their largest remaining colliery with 258 employed. The concern was closed down in 1928, and the seams at all the Main Collieries were abandoned by the following year.