Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Cymmer Colliery, Rhondda. Mounted on card. Photographers details bottom right. Mounted also on thin green card with caption typed on.

Cymmer Colliery viewed from the north west, probably around the mid to late 1860s. The photographer is located on the east side of Cymmer Bridge. The retaining wall around the heapstead appears to be new masonry, the wooden roof of the pit head structure appears to be new, and a boiler can be seen left of the heapstead, awaiting installation (these features suggest that significant construction work has been undertaken and is continuing). The colliery was extensively remodelled and the shaft deepened in 1862-1864, and it is possible that the photograph was taken to record completion of the remodelling. Grouped near the railway buffers in front of the heapstead is a well-to-do group comprising a top-hatted middle aged gentleman, and five younger women (two standing and three seated) and one younger man (seated): it is likely that the gentleman is James Harvey Insole (1821-1901), from 1851 the principal of George Insole & Son, the company that sank the shaft in 1848 and which owned it until 1897 when it adopted limited liability as Insoles Ltd; the other members of the group may include his daughter Mary Ann Lily (1846-1917), and some of her cousins. The seated younger man may be one of his sons, James Walter (1845-1898) and George Frederick (1847-1917). Their clothing suggests an 1860s date. On the left (east) can be seen the footbridge over the River Taff that connected the colliery to the southern part of the village of Porth, and chimneys of some of the coke ovens that lay south east of the colliery. On the right (west) can be seen part of the winding engine house and a substantial but low square chimney stack which may be a furnace ventilation stack. In the distance is the rear of a substantial house in School Street which may have been the colliery manager’s house. In the right foreground stands a line of empty coal wagons with sprung buffers at one end and dumb buffers at the opposite end; some show traces of lettering on their top plank (the usual position of the name ‘George Insole & Son’ at this time) and most have the usual Insole’s white triangle device. Behind the group of people stands a line of empty railway wagons of a different type, apparently also unlettered and seemingly lacking the white triangle; they appear to have higher sides which suggests that they may be for coke rather than for coal. At the top of the steps at the left side of the heapstead stands a tightly packed group of workers.