Tag: Coal

Could climate change cause another Aberfan in Wales?

Categories Deforestation, WalksLeave a Comment on Could climate change cause another Aberfan in Wales?
The coal tip slip at Tylorstown

Today marks the 55th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster in South Wales – where over 100 children died when a landslide from an unstable coal tip engulfed their school. I remembered Aberfan as I walked through the Rhondda Valley on my journey and contemplated the continued risk to Welsh coal-mining villages. Here is part of the essay.

Even as the coal mines closed their environmental legacy remained. What was noticeable everywhere we walked through coal mining country was the absence of vegetation around many of the towns and villages that serviced the collieries. That’s because much of the waste material and tailings from the mines had been deposited, dumped actually, on the hillsides around the settlements. A few days before, as we’d walked through the windfarm above Penrhys, we’d seen for ourselves the problems this practice had caused.

Below us we’d looked down on Stanleytown and Tylorstown, once thriving coal villages named after English engineers that came to speculate for coal and made a fortune. Today both villages sat stranded and forgotten in the steep, glacial valley of the Rhondda Fach. Probably the most successful thing to come out of Stanleytown since the coal mine closed in the 1960s is the comedian Paul Whitehouse.

Tylorstown, however, had been in news just recently but not for good reasons. In February 2020 unprecedented heavy rainfall caused a 60,000 tonne landslide at the site of an old coal tip above the town. We could see it clearly from our position on the mountain – a wide black scar on the hillside across from us.

As we looked down at the landslide it hit home exactly how, when you scrape the surface of south Wales, the legacy of the coal industry is still evident and still affects the communities that live among its ghosts.

The warnings of more landslides also evoked memories of the Aberfan disaster a couple of miles northeast of where we now standing. On October 21st, 1966 at around 9.15am a coal tip that had been piled on a mountain slope above the town gave way, sending an avalanche of slurry pouring down upon Pantglas Junior School where the young students had just started their lessons. The entire school was engulfed and local people were forced to dig with their hands in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt save the children. In total 109 pupils and five teachers perished under the weight of the landslide.

The Aberfan disaster shocked the entire United Kingdom – reminding a nation that was increasingly seeing itself through the lens of modern of the brutal reality of its heavy industrial legacy. Many Britons were starting to enjoy owning TVs for the first time and the horror was exacerbated by the scenes of the aftermath that were broadcast on TV news. That horror turned to anger as it became clear the accident could have been prevented –  reports revealed that the coal waste had been dumped over a natural spring and that the government run National Coal Board had been aware that the tip was unstable. The tribunal convened to investigate the disaster laid the blame squarely on the Coal Board writing that the “Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented.”

Now there seemed a very real danger that another Aberfan-style disaster might occur in the future. The Tylorstown tip was just one of nearly 300 old dumping grounds across the south Wales valleys that were at significant risk of slippage according to one recent report – a threat exacerbated by climate change geologists had warned.

All over the world the effect of climate change is being exacerbated by widespread deforestation – trees and vegetation help anchor soil to the ground preventing erosion and landslips during heavy rain. This is hardly a new issue. Experts have long pointed to the effects of deforestation caused by sugar cane plantations all over Haiti as a worst-case example, while recent mining operations in Indonesia and Malaysia denuded vast tracts of hillside land.

Here in the valleys the situation was doubly troubling. Not only had all the local and available trees been cut down for pitwood leaving the surrounding hillsides bare and exposed to the elements, the collieries had then made the situation worse by dumping its waste on already unstable ground.

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Staring down at stranded assets in the South Wales valleys

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Looking down the valley from the Bwlch Mountain

Very little of the vast coal wealth that helped build Cardiff flowed back up the valleys to the mining towns we were looking down on now. The early morning mist at the top of the Bwlch Mountain had cleared and below us, in Ogmore Vale and along the Afon Afan, we could spot stranded ex-coal villages – mini-pockets of humanity jammed in among the steep sided valleys.

On our left was Nant-y-Moel – once home to the Wyndham/Western Colliery until it was closed down in 1983. To our right we could see the tips of Abergwynfi and Blaengwynfi (two sister mining communities on opposite banks of the Afan).

Perhaps the most sobering thing about the South Wales coal boom was how brief was its heyday. More than 57 million tonnes of coal were produced in 1913 by 232,000 men working in 620 mines in a thin corridor of hills and valleys no more than 10 miles wide. By 1920, the industry employed 271,000 men across South Wales but, in the years following the First World War, demand for Welsh coal began to wane. Top grade Welsh steam coal now faced new competition from mining operations in Germany and the United States and from an existential threat – an oil industry that was fast replacing the old steam age (and with devastating repercussions for coal-dependent communities like the ones we could see now that our oil-addicted society would do well to pay heed to today).

Nearly 250 mines closed across South Wales between 1921 and 1926. That year a Royal Commission concluded that the coal industry had to be reshaped and that miners needed to accept wage cuts. The private mine owners jumped at the opportunity and demanded large cuts. The miners’ union refused and on April 30th, workers who refused wage cuts were locked out and coalfields in South Wales and across the UK came to a halt.

For nine days the UK economy was paralysed as most of the workforce went on strike to support the miners. However, on May 12th, other unions returned to work after agreeing terms with the Government. The miners carried on until the end of the year when starvation forced them back to work.  

To stave off mass unemployment the UK government put some miners to work on large scale infrastructure projects – including the Bwlch mountain bypass (part of the larger Glamorgan Inter-Valley Road project) which was built in 1928 and which we were walking above right now. Before the road was built the mining communities had no way of accessing neighbouring valleys unless they undertook the type of hike we had embarked on, following ancient routes up and over the mountains.

The Bwlch bypass wasn’t just a public works project to ease the unemployed miners’ unrest – politicians also thought it could provide the communities with a way to access nature and escape the often dark and dank existence at the foot of the valleys. For this reason the road, with so many switchbacks it felt like navigating an Alpine pass, was constructed with room both for motor vehicles and pedestrians. Once completed it succeeded in attracting generation after generation of local sightseers to the top of the mountain. It became so popular that one enterprising Italian immigrant family set up a mobile ice cream van in the car park at the summit. They became so famous that the mountain became known as Ice Cream Slope by the many hang-gliders who headed up there.

The other major project that the UK government put Welsh miners to work on was planting vast forests of conifer trees. All across Wales the Forestry Commission set up camps for miners – primarily to “rehabilitate” and “recondition” the men so that they were ready for tough manual labour (notably on road projects like the Bwlch). Here in the Ogmore and abutting Afan valleys major new forest projects were launched. As we wandered now through a sprawling windfarm on our way to Maesteg we could see the results to the north of us – a wide carpet of connected conifer forest starting at Coed Bwlch and running across the horizon to Rheola forest (where some 13,000 acres was planted over a 20 year period) near the town of Neath. This monocultured expanse would become known as Coed Morgannwg (Glamorgan Wood) and nowadays, Afan Forest Park.  That’s where we were headed next.

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The green, green parks of home – A walk through the legacy of Cardiff’s coal wealth

Categories Culture and Nature, The Rights of Trees, WalksLeave a Comment on The green, green parks of home – A walk through the legacy of Cardiff’s coal wealth
Cedar of Lebanon at Insole Court, Cardiff

On Thursday, September 9th, 2021 more than 60 trees located all across Bute Park in Cardiff were destroyed in what was either an act of vandalism or perhaps a pre-meditated attack on nature. Throughout the pandemic Bute Park became a haven for people wanting to walk and explore nature in the city. I thought now would be a good time to share this part of my journey of exploration where I discovered the charms of Bute Park.

My inspiration for starting The Liminal Forest walking project had been the public parks and woodlands in and around my hometown of Cardiff. Wandering these green and wooded spaces had been my escape from the stress and drudgery of the pandemic lockdown. As I walked through them each day I came to realise how disconnected I had become from the natural world and also how many other people, like me, were out exploring, soaking up nature and reconnecting.

Now that I was deep into my walk through Wales, and also my research into how our modern society became so disconnected from the natural world around it, I decided to retrace some of the urban park and woodland walks I had done during lockdown. Specifically, I wanted to explore how Cardiff’s coal wealth had shaped my hometown and particularly the parks so many of us considered a lifeline – having seen in the South Wales Valleys how that same coal industry had broken the connection local communities had with the land around them.

My starting point was to be Insole Court, a Victorian mansion and gardens that today sits surrounded by streets of semi-detached homes in the neighbourhood of Llandaff, a couple of miles walk away from the city centre

The Insoles had been one of the most important coal families in all of Wales. The patriarch, George Insole, had moved to Cardiff from England in the early 19th century and, over the next 30 years, he and his son, James, built a coal shipping dynasty that would help make Cardiff the coal capital of the world. Their signature coal venture was a mine called Cymmer, situated 20 miles north of Cardiff in the heart of the south Wales valleys.

George Insole died of heart failure on Christmas Day, 1850 and James, just 29 years old at the time, took over the full running of the business. Headstrong and no doubt eager to build on his father’s legacy, James rapidly increased production at Cymmer. The younger Insole doubled the workforce to 160 men and boys, and further expanded the underground reach of the mines but failed to increase the number of ventilation shafts needed to keep air flowing underground and minimise the build-up of flammable gases including methane known in the industry as firedamp.

On the morning of Tuesday 15th July 1856 disaster struck. At six in the morning, just as 160 men and boys descended the shaft to begin their shift, a huge explosion ripped through the mine – killing 114, some as young as 10 years old.

Just six months later, James Insole purchased an estate on the outskirts of Cardiff called Ely Court. Over time everyone came to know the grand mansion and gardens as Insole Court where I was standing now. I knew these grounds very well. My childhood home backed onto Insole Court’s gardens and, as a child, it had provided an almost fantasy-like playground for myself and the kids in the neighbourhood.

I wandered the nine acres of grounds reacquainting myself with old but familiar surroundings. On this sunny morning, the gardens were full of families escaping the monotony of months of being grounded at home. Toddlers straddled the old stone lion at the top of the great lawn. Slightly older kids chased each other through the ornate gardens – playing hide and seek in the nursery runs, bushes and grotto made from local quarried rocks in one corner of the grounds as I had at their age. A grand, expansive Cedar of Lebanon tree continued to stand watch over all the proceedings – its black branches and deep green leaves spread wide in repose as if getting ready to settle into a comfy chair.

At the front of the house the long driveway flanked by rows of Horse Chestnut trees led up a gentle hill to the main gates. Close by, local residents had created a memorial garden to remind visitors of the Insoles’ debt to the mine workers at Cymmer. Standing in front of the memorial, it really hit home just how much of Cardiff owed its affluence and success to the sacrifices of those coal miners. And just how big a player the city once was in shaping the global fossil fuel (and ultimately climate change) legacy.

I left Insole Court, turned right onto Fairwater Road and walked into Llandaff village, passing by some other grand old houses one owned by local coal merchants. I took a shortcut through Llandaff village green, walking down Cathedral hill and through the cemetery. I walked past the ornate but weathered gravestone of Ivy Insole who died in 1888 and where husband James was laid to rest 12 years later. And then I joined the river path and walked to Bute Park – named after the third Marquess of Bute, perhaps the most influential figure in the growth of the Welsh coal industry.

The Marquess wasn’t that interested in coal mining itself. However, he happened to own thousands of acres of land north of Cardiff where the rich coal seams lay. Today, Bute Park is a great example of how public parks and open space can help a city breathe. It had formerly been the Bute’s private estate directly to the north of Cardiff Castle, which the third Marquess, working with the acclaimed architect William Burgess, had transformed into a Gothic Revival-style palace during the late 19th Century.

It was lunchtime as I walked through the park and it was full of people escaping the isolation of their homes and enjoying the day. Runners, cyclists and determined walkers jostled for position on the main tarmac path through the park. Couples walked holding hands while lone walkers, keen to escape the throng, explored a thin dirt sidetrack that hugged the old, disused, Dock Feeder Canal which once carried a constant supply of fresh water down to Cardiff Docks to help keep the entrance to the tidal Bristol Channel open. Groups of teenagers disappeared into the bushes and undergrowth by the side of the river – looking for a bit of pebble beach to hang out and smoke weed (judging from the aroma wafting through the park). The main lawn of Bute Park was packed with families having picnics while groups of students from neighbouring Cardiff University played football, threw frisbees or just kicked back with beers.

In its heyday, these private gardens were the jewel of the Bute family’s estate. The original Castle green was first designed by the famous landscape architect, Capability Brown, in the late 18th century under instructions from the 2nd Marquess. But it was his son who expanded the design of the estate, recruiting Andrew Pettigrew to create the elaborate ornamental gardens, plant all manner of exotic trees and shape intricate pathways that still make the park so appealing today and such a focal point of outdoor life in the city.

Just like with Insole Court, as I walked through Bute Park I couldn’t help but consider the irony of how such a beautiful and varied homage to trees and nature had been financed by the Bute’s coal wealth. Back then nobody gave this a second thought. Today, I suspect, it might be greeted with the same sense of greenwashing disdain that many people view tobacco and oil companies sponsoring museums and art galleries.

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