Mardy Colliery

Maerdy derives its name from a large farmhouse on a bank of the Rhondda Fach, which became the local meeting place for both court matters and worship.

[1] While other areas of the South Wales coalfield had been exploited up to 50 years earlier, due to the scarcity and difficult access conditions of Rhondda Fach, it remained largely undeveloped.

But the demand for steam coal drove development and, in 1874, Mordecai Jones of Brecon and Nantmelyn purchased the mineral rights around the farmhouse and its surrounding lands from the estate of the late Crawshay Bailey for £122,000.

[1][discuss] Nationalised in 1947, the mine was redeveloped by the National Coal Board with a £7 million investment announced in 1949, creating capacity for No.

[1] It was transformed into one of the most modern pits in the United Kingdom, with fully electric winding, new extended railway sidings and a coal washing plant on the surface, built on the site of the former No.

The last miners' shift descended to pit bottom on 21 December 1990, after which friends were allowed down to collect souvenir pieces of the 5 ft seam, and then return to sing carols in the surface canteen.

[1] A rescue team led by Mr. William Thomas, a director of Lockett's Merthyr Steam Coal Company, immediately descended.

[1] After the Coroner's Inquest, held at the Maerdy Hotel on 12–18 January 1886, a barrister, A. G. C. Liddell, was appointed to submit a report to the Mines Inspector, and hence to the Minister and both houses of Parliament.

"[1] Liddell concluded that the most likely cause of the explosion was poor observance of shot-firing regulations, it having been normal practise to ignore the blue-flame warning of the lamps.

Stonemasons were working in the area to reduce the height of a rock fall so that it did not become a gas collection point, and had been using an open-flamed "comet" lamp.

Liddell concludes that either the shot-firing dislodged gas above the arch on to the "comet," or that the lamp was raised too high and came into contact with coal damp.

A prominent communist, Arthur Horner, was elected in absentia as a checkweighman—at the time, he was serving a prison sentence for refusing to fight in the First World War.

The wives formed the first women's support groups in the South Wales Coalfield, organising food collection and distribution, and joining their husbands on the picket lines.