Qualla: Six Bells Colliery

Six Bells Colliery: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tylerian3, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 28 June 1960, at approximately 10:45 in the morning, an explosion tore through the West District of the Old Coal Seam at Six Bells Colliery in Abertillery. Forty-five of the 48 men working that section died. Lethal carbon monoxide had filled the workings within minutes. The Inspector of Mines later concluded that the most likely cause was firedamp, the methane that haunts every deep coal mine, ignited by a single spark from a stone falling onto a steel girder. A single spark. Fifty years later, on the same day in 2010, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams stood at the site and unveiled a 20-metre tall steel figure called the Guardian. Sebastian Boyesen designed it from thousands of steel ribbons. It looks across the Ebbw Fach valley, at the ground where the colliery once stood, at the houses where the families still live.

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Image: Tylerian3 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Six Bells Colliery: Before the Pit Had a Name

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. Mining at this site began in 1863, when Thomas Phillips Price sank a balance shaft at Hafod Van on the eastern side of the Ebbw Fach River. That early operation was modest. The real colliery began in 1892 when John Lancaster and Co. started sinking two new 352-yard shafts on the ...

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Image: Chris Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Six Bells Colliery: Boom, Bust, Boom

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Ridley, Public domain. The colliery's workforce reflected the larger swings of the Welsh coal industry. By 1914 it employed 2,857 men. Through the 1920s, 859 men worked the Big Vein and Three Quarter seams at No. 4 pit; 1,529 worked the Black Vein and Meadow Vein seams at No. 5. The economic downturn o...

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Image: Martin Ridley | Public domain

Six Bells Colliery: What Happened That Morning

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. The shift had been working in the West District of the Old Coal Seam for hours when the explosion came. Firedamp, the colourless methane that seeps from coal seams into mine air, had ignited somehow. The fire spread along the coal dust suspended in the air, and the dust itself ig...

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Image: Chris Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Six Bells Colliery: After the Disaster

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Ridley, Public domain. Six Bells kept working. In a mining town there was little choice. As part of the National Coal Board's 1970s strategy of consolidating into super-pits, the colliery was integrated with Marine Colliery at Cwm; coal from the Six Bells workings was raised through Marine after that, ...

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Image: Martin Ridley | Public domain

Six Bells Colliery: The Guardian

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Hughes, CC BY-SA 2.0. The former colliery site was landscaped and renamed Parc Arael Griffin, with a visitor centre at Ty Ebbw Fach that includes a restaurant and a Valleys Mining Town Experience room. The park is now a point on the Ebbw Fach Trail. In 2010, on the 50th anniversary of the disaster, th...

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Image: Alan Hughes | CC BY-SA 2.0