Bronze Age Gold from Wales

General view of Upper Cymmer (originally known as New Cymmer) Colliery, between Porth and Dinas in the Rhondda Valley. Photographers details bottom right.

The view dates from after 1883 when George Insole & Son acquired the colliery (and connected it as downcast shaft to the workings of their main Cymmer Colliery which was located half a mile to the south east), and prior to 1897 when the company became Insoles Ltd (and their wagons were relettered). These new owners did not work the colliery until 1884-85 when they opened out deeper seams (the upper seams having being almost exhausted by the previous owners) which further narrows the date range to 1884-1897. The photo shows a newly roofed screens with incomplete retaining wall (note toothing on left (east), and the debris in the left foreground, suggests very recent construction work. Overall the impression is of a recently refurbished colliery, so the photo seems likely to date to around 1884-85 (a winter date is indicated by the absence of foliage on the tree behind the office) and may have been taken to record the commencement of production under George Insole & Son: the lack of foliage points. The photograph comprises a general view of the colliery seen from the north; a battery of coke ovens lay out of view to the right (east). From right (east) to left (west) are: the gable of an unidentified building, a circular ventilation furnace stack (dating from when this was an independent colliery, when the stack would have acted as the upcast), the winding engine house probably newly built to judge from the appearance of the stonework and the absence of accumulated grease marks below the winding rope aperture) with a short square boiler stack behind, headgear with what appears to be a blacksmiths’ shop below to the left (east), and the screens; the two-storey building behind the screens with a prominent bay window probably housed the offices and the manager’s house. Among the workers right of the headgear can be glimpsed at least one woman surface worker; a girl in a clean light-coloured pinafore dress stands left of the whitewashed blacksmiths’ shop|: the cleanliness of her clothes suggest that she may have just brought food to a relative employed on the surface of the colliery. In the foreground is a line of loaded coal wagons with sprung buffers at one end and dumb buffers at the opposite end, being shunted from the rear by an 0-6-0ST locomotive with inside cylinders. In the period 1888-1897, George Insole & Son owned only one locomotive of this type: ‘Lilly’, of uncertain manufacture, though Manning Wardle & Co and E.B. Wilson & Co, both of Leeds, have been suggested; this photograph appears to confirm Manning Wardle as the builder; the name plate appears, under magnification, to read ‘Lilay’; it may be relevant that the company is also recorded as having owned an 0-4-0ST (by John Fowler & Co of Leeds , builder’s number 3154 of 1880) named ‘Lylie’, suggesting possible confusion of a single locomotive. The principal of George Insole & Son at this time was James Harvey Insole (1821-1901); one of his daughters was Mary Ann Lily. The train has been assembled with the wagons’ sprung buffers and end doors all the east end, ready for their journey to Cardiff docks. A second line of wagons stands beneath the screens: the leftmost has been loaded; the others await loading. All the wagons have the usual Insole’s device of a white triangle; some have an infilling triangle of a different colour above, making a square – the significance of the presence or absence of this second colour is unclear. The device has mostly been applied to the closed ends of the wagons, but on at least two it has been applied to the door end, indicating that it is a visual recognition device for wagon ownership (comparable to other geometric devices used by other south Wales coal companies on their wagons) rather than indicating door end or closed end of a wagon. The railway tracks at this point were privately owned; the colliery was connected to the Taff Vale Railway’s Rhondda Fawr Branch via a bridge across the River Taff east of the coke ovens.