Pit Disasters at Senghenydd Exhibition

The Community Centre was formerly the Miners' Library which Toby used: "I got Kilvert's Diaries out of the library and then wondered aimlessly around the town, mingling with the shoppers." The Sweet & Bitter Earth

In 1901 an explosion at the Universal killed eighty-one miners. In 1913 an even greater explosion shook the village, killing 440 men in "the greatest disaster in the annals of British mining" in terms of loss. This exhibition explores the story and the impact of this disaster.

"Some say, who were awake early on Tuesday the thirteenth of October in the Aber Valley, that an angel appeared in the sky above the Bryn; the same chap, said Tommy Arse, that he saw later standing in the sky above Mons, when he was fighting for King of England, and not King Coal....

"There's high rise gas this mornin'," said somebody as the cage rattled down in flashing lights..... According to talk later, the Lancaster downcast exploded with a roar that brought down ceilings, sending a shaft of flame a hundred feet into the air, and billowing smoke: it blew the top of the pit shaft to pieces, it blew the head off Joe Moggridge, a banksman.

Two thousand feet lower, where the night shift was coming off and the day shift going on, it did rather more." This Sweet & Bitter Earth

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