Thanks for that Bob. Very moving,  they should teach this in schools not just in former mining communities. The families of the rescue teams must be very proud.

Narrated in such a way one could not fail to be moved. I did not know about the 1901 disaster only the 1913 one. Thank you for making this video it is a story so worth telling and one that needs to be kept alive.

My dad was a coal miner at Merthyr Vale colliery - which of course was the mine responsible for the Aberfan Disaster - all his working life and Senghenydd loomed large for both our and all mining communities, even into the 1980s,  when the South Wales coalfield was closed down.

A very well made and judged piece, delivered with the respect and sensitivity the events it deserve.

Excellent tribute Bob, very moving. Tracing my family history I discovered that my grandparents moved from Troedyrhiw to Abertridwr in September 1913, just a couple of weeks before the disaster. I don’t know if my grandfather was working at the Windsor pit or at Universal, as quite o lot of Abertridwr men were employed there as well. Either way he must have wondered what he had taken on. When the Great War broke out ten months later, he was one of the first to sign up in Abertridwr. What tough lives they led back then.

Thank you Bob, both fascinating and sad at the same time, may they rest in peace.

Thanks for both your videos of the Senghenydd  railway branch . An excellent piece of heritage work .

Thank you so much for that moving tribute. Having grown up in Cardiff in the 60s and early 70s i was not aware of ever being told of the disaster. Turned out a work collegue in Plymouth came from Sengenydd and he told me about the disasters. I expect it was not in the authorities interest to make people aware of the huge numbers killed over the years to keep the country running.

My grandfather had finished his shift just before the 1913 explosion.
He ran back to help with the rescue.
He was never the same again.

Just subscribed, Bob. Thank you for your video. Very informative. It's important to keep our history and heritage alive.

It needs a good historian to describe this so well. I have been there before and read many of the plates and tiles. This wonderful video provides the soundtrack to my visit.

I used to have a job that would place me down in the valleys quite often, Aberdare, Pontypridd etc. The one day I was talking to a chap in Ponty, and the Aberfan disaster got mentioned, and he told that that whilst most people knew of Aberfan, and these who lost their lives there, mainly at the school, very few people knew about the Senghenydd disaster, even though it was much larger.  I will admit that at that time I never knew about it either, but since I have stopped going down that way with work , I have looked it up, and only two years ago I travelled from the West Midlands for a day, to visit the Garden of Remembrance at Aberfan, and the onto Senghenydd, to look at the memorial and the remaining rail paths that can still be made out on the pit site. A touching day out for both venues.

absolutely beautiful piece of work, i live in six bells, my grand father, first took me underground, when i was 12 in 1984, to real mine, a live mine, not a museum like big pit. The speed of the bond, was terrifying, open sides, and a plunge into water at the bottom, where it had been raining. we stepped out at pit bottom. and  the eerie feeling as the wind rushed through, as a banksman opened the door. there was a first aid office to the left all painted white, stark contrast, to the complete blackness and the concrete road, that lead in to the distance.... all ny uncles, grand fathers, father, all suffered dust on the lung, i was so glad when the shut the mine and i never had to start, when i was 16

A moving tribute, thank you. My grandfather was a miner at the Universal, but was not underground at the time. He died young of miner’s lung (pneumoconiosis) before I ever knew him. My grandmother lived on in Senghenydd until she died. I remember as a child watching the spoil from the mine at Aber being tipped on the top of the mountain and the locomotives shunting coal tracks up the valley.
There was an enquiry into the disaster which did not really answer the question of cause. For convenience the most likely cause was deemed to be a spark from a communication bell system which had had an extra battery added to make it work, but even in a laboratory this could only just be made to produce a spark. The pattern of the explosion was also not a perfect fit for this. A minority view blamed a rock fall breaking a safety lamp. Whichever, the real culprit was the vast amount of coal dust in the mine which was lifted by the initial blast and in turn resulted in a massive dust explosion.
There was an outcry at the initial fine on the owners, and this was somewhat increased. As you say, the mine manager took the brunt; despite being described by the enquiry as capable and diligent. The fines were for technical breaches of regulations (for example, a requirement to be able to reverse fans for ventilation was not met) but these did not contribute to the cause of the explosion nor the horrific consequences.
Neither my grandmother, my father or my uncle ever mentioned the disaster to me in their lifetimes. What they did tell me was that my grandfather swore his sons would never need to go down the pit.

Great video

Bob that was a stunning video, I grew up in Llanbradach many of my family were miners, big strong chaps full of stories and laughter, all were only too aware of the danger but they needed the pit owners money to survive.
They had many stories of loss and the pit owners love of money, one being they felt the loss of pit ponies more than men because ponies cost money to replace.
The owner of Univ was fined something like 50 quid (!) for not having safety measures like being able to reverse the fan to stop feeding the pit fire with air.
2013 the orginal steam whistle from the univ belted out its awful sound at the time of the explosion.
Awful work fir the miners and I am sure the they would not be sad to see the pits have gone.

Superb historian and videos, thanks for sharing.  I used to live in that terrace that overlooked the colliery at Senghenydd, it was a massive sawmill then and a massive site.  That's gone now too.  Oddly enough, I now overlook the Cambrian Colliery site which you also mentioned in the garden

Thank you for creating a respectful and thoughtful video. By chance we were in Cardiff on the day of the memorial garden opening, so we took a detour on the way home to visit it later in the day. It is still well kept, and a sobering place to visit. There is also a memorial in the school grounds, in the form of a smaller version of the pithead gear, that was there before the memorial garden was created.
Regarding the railway, there is a bridge slightly further up the valley that takes the road over it up to the terraces of houses on the hill, and you can see it better if you pull into the bus turning area. On the NLS OS 6" 1888-1913 map the railway seems to stop short of here before the houses were built, and links with a tramroad coming down from the west, but Rail Map online shows a line ending just past the bridge, which seems very odd that a bridge was built for a railway that only went a few more yards?

Good film Bob. I agree with your comment when people say reopen the pits. I assume the majority of the dead are still down there.

Great video 👏 but my one disagreement is i think we should 100% open more pits in the uk 💪

Hi  i used to live in station terrace  no,5   surname of Evans    ,   now live in dorset where we moved to for work     june 1977   ,