Cefn Coed Colliery, No. 1 Shaft Headframe

Cadw's description

Location

Located at the Cefn Coed Colliery Museum in the Dulais Valley, on the A4109 two miles north of Aberdulais.

History

Cefn Coed Colliery was sunk in 1926-7 at that time being the deepest anthracite mine in the world with two shafts over 732m deep. The colliery began production of high-quality anthracite in 1930, employed over 900 men in 1945 and closed in 1968. The site remained in use in association with the Blaenant Drift Mine in the valley floor to the south, which was driven in the 1960s and closed in 1990. The Cefn Coed Colliery Museum was established in 1978 and has within its area at the side of the site several important monuments, including the colliery’s original steam boilerhouse, chimney, compressor house, electrical generating house and the winding house of No 2 shaft with the original steam winding engines.

Exterior

Colliery headframe, one of two original to the establishment of the colliery in 1926-7 and constructed of steel lattice girders with four vertical supports and two bracing buttresses extending from the head of the tower to the ground on the winding engine side. Each support has a brick plinth at ground level. The lattice girders are joined by rivetted plates. Both structures are some 18m high, with winding sheaves still in place at their tops, and form considerable landmarks in the valley. Both shafts have been capped with steel joists fixed in concrete and metal plate covers.
No 1 headframe is the more northerly of the two, and tops the upcast shaft, which was connected underground to the nearby fan house. The interior of the tower is boxed in with steel plates in order to control ventilation and cause air to be drawn in down No 2 shaft. The steel lattices are in good condition and the headframe was in recent use to provide additional access to the Blaenant drift. The structure appears largely as it did when built, apart from the addition of new steel staircase adjoining on the east side, the construction of a new platform at the sheaves level, and the removal of the topmost bracings.

Reason for designation

Listed at II* as one of two of the only surviving pre-war headframes in the anthracite coalfield, which are one of only two sets of the once widespread lattice girder construction left anywhere in South Wales. They have important group value in relation to the adjacent preserved buildings of the Cefn Coed Colliery Museum, forming the principal landmarks of the site as a whole.