Qualla: Coal tips in Wales https://qualla.com/coal-tips-in-wales en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/m/coal-tips-in-wales-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Coal tips in Wales https://qualla.com/coal-tips-in-wales Coal tips in Wales: Introduction https://qualla.com/coal-tips-in-wales/ Photo credit Chris Andrews, CC BY-SA 2.0. At 9.15 on a wet October morning in 1966, a coal tip on the slope above Aberfan gave way. Saturated by groundwater, the 30-metre pile of mine waste slid down the hillside and engulfed Pantglas Junior School. One hundred and sixteen children and twenty-eight adults died. The tip was not in a remote glen. It had been built directly above a school, above a village, above streams nobody had bothered to map. Six decades later, that morning still defines how Wales thinks about coal tips - because there are still more than 2,500 of them, and on a Welsh hillside, gravity is patient.

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Image: Chris Andrews | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/m/coal-tips-in-wales-wp/gcjm-coal-tips-in-wales-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Coal tips in Wales: What the Industry Left Behind https://qualla.com/coal-tips-in-wales/ Photo credit Chris Andrews, CC BY-SA 2.0. When the South Wales coalfield was producing at full tilt, miners hauled up the seams and the spoil. The spoil - rock, shale, low-grade coal, anything that was not the seam itself - got piled wherever was nearest and downhill of the pithead. Decades of this added up. Wales today ...

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Image: Chris Andrews | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/m/coal-tips-in-wales-wp/gcjm-coal-tips-in-wales-what-the-industry-left-behind.mp3 0:06 2 full Coal tips in Wales: Storm Dennis and the Reckoning https://qualla.com/coal-tips-in-wales/ Photo credit Chris Andrews, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 16 February 2020, Storm Dennis dumped weeks of rain on the valleys in a weekend. At Tylorstown in the Rhondda Fach, on the western slopes of Cefn Gwyngul, the Llanwonno coal tip moved - a long, dark scar opening down the hillside above the village. Nobody died. But the slip pr...

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Image: Chris Andrews | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/m/coal-tips-in-wales-wp/gcjm-coal-tips-in-wales-storm-dennis-and-the-reckoning.mp3 0:06 3 full Coal tips in Wales: The Bill and the Argument https://qualla.com/coal-tips-in-wales/ Photo credit Chris Andrews, CC BY-SA 2.0. Making 2,000 ageing coal tips safe is estimated to cost between £500 million and £600 million across ten to fifteen years. Rhondda Cynon Taf alone, the worst-affected county, would need around £82.5 million. The argument over who pays has been politically uncomfortable. Coal tip ...

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Image: Chris Andrews | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/m/coal-tips-in-wales-wp/gcjm-coal-tips-in-wales-the-bill-and-the-argument.mp3 0:06 4 full Coal tips in Wales: A New Authority https://qualla.com/coal-tips-in-wales/ Photo credit Chris Andrews, CC BY-SA 2.0. In December 2024 the Welsh Government published the Disused Mine and Quarry Tips (Wales) Bill. It would create a Disused Tips Authority for Wales by April 2027 - a new body with a register, a regulatory regime, and the power to compel private landowners to repair tips they did no...

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Image: Chris Andrews | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/m/coal-tips-in-wales-wp/gcjm-coal-tips-in-wales-a-new-authority.mp3 0:06 5 full Coal tips in Wales: The View From Above https://qualla.com/coal-tips-in-wales/ Photo credit Chris Andrews, CC BY-SA 2.0. Fly the line of the South Wales Valleys - up the Rhondda Fach, over Tylorstown, across the ridge into the Cynon and the Taff - and the tips read like a map of an industry. Long dark fingers descend from the watersheds. Many sit directly above small towns; nearly all of them lie a...

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Image: Chris Andrews | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/m/coal-tips-in-wales-wp/gcjm-coal-tips-in-wales-the-view-from-above.mp3 0:06 6 full