That was the headlines in 'The Merthyr Express' newspaper after the horrendous explosion of Friday 8th November 1867 at the Ferndale No1 Colliery, Blaenllechau Pit. 178 men and boys were killed, some so badly burned that their identity was almost impossible to establish. The No1 Colliery was sunk in 1857 by David Davies, a coal owner from Aberdare in the nearby Cynon Valley. It was the first colliery in the Rhondda Fach to reach the high quality measures of steam coal that was to power the Royal Navy through the First World War. It was, however, a poorly run mine, the miners being allowed to work with naked flames. After the first explosion lessons went unlearned and again on the 10th June 1869 another explosion killed a further 53 miners. The colliery closed in 1959.
As a photographer and having lived in the coal minings valleys of South Wales all my life, looking at the magnificent sweep of the mountains, I have to ask the question as to how beautiful this valley must have been before the arrival of the coal mines.