Qualla: Deep Navigation Colliery

Deep Navigation Colliery: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Mauretania crossed the Atlantic in 1909 in four days, ten hours and fifty-one minutes, and held the Blue Riband for twenty years. The Lusitania had already taken the prize back from German rivals two years earlier. Both ships ran on the same fuel: the rich smokeless steam coal hauled out of Deep Navigation Colliery in the Taff Bargoed valley, the deepest pit in the South Wales coalfield by 200 yards. Cunard chose Welsh coal because it burned hot, clean and steady, and because nothing else could push a 30,000-ton liner across the North Atlantic at twenty-six knots. The coal came from a hole in the ground next to a village called Treharris - a village that had not existed before the pit went down.

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Deep Navigation Colliery: Three Farms and a River

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Before 1872 there was almost nothing here. Three farms - Twyn-y-Garreg, Pantanas, Cefn Forest - and the quiet River Taff Bargoed running down a wooded valley between the slopes. Then Frederick W Harris and his backers signed a mineral lease over three thousand acres, and the vall...

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Deep Navigation Colliery: Ropes and Cages

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Going down was always the dangerous part. On 12 December 1884, five men descended No. 2 South shaft in a bowk - a heavy iron bucket used for maintenance work - to replace the safety harness. They had barely begun their descent when the 3.5-inch braided steel flat rope above them ...

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Deep Navigation Colliery: The Blue Riband Coal

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What came out of the pit was extraordinary. Deep Navigation's seams produced steam coal of a quality unmatched almost anywhere in Britain - hard, low in ash, high in calorific value, ideal for ships' boilers that needed maximum heat from minimum stoking. The Royal Navy bought it;...

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Deep Navigation Colliery: The Last Pony, the Last Shift

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The last pit pony was retired from Deep Navigation in 1973 - not the last in Britain, but a small milestone in a long farewell. The pit kept working through the bitter twelve months of the 1984-85 miners' strike, when photographers came up the Fox Street to document the picket li...

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Deep Navigation Colliery: A Park Where the Pit Was

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The combined sites of Deep Navigation, Taff Merthyr and Trelewis Drift collieries became Parc Taff Bargoed, opened for the Millennium. Two new lakes hold what used to be coal yard. Footbridges arch over the river that the colliery once buried. Rugby and football pitches sit where...

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