Photographic History of Mining in South Wales

The South Wales Valleys once boasted the richest coalfields and the best anthracite coal in the world. Before the dawn of the twenty—first century all but one of the hundreds of coal pits were closed, destroying jobs and whole communities. Only Tower Colliery at Hirwaun continued to produce coal, thanks to the bid by the miners to keep working. Miners were news at the time of the strikes and disasters but not when they risked life, limb and lung in the bowels of the earth to keep industry t...