The Parc Slip Explosion

On the morning of August 26th, 1892, 22-year-old coal haulier William Lyddon left his home at Fountain Cottages in Aberkenfig, South Wales, and made the short walk to work his shift underground at Parc Slip Colliery. It was the day of the annual St Mary Hill Fair, and apparently a fine Summer's day. William's shift would begin at six in the morning; with twenty or so of his colleagues having gone to the Fair - an hour into the shift, only 143 Davy lamps had been handed out to the men going underground.

Parc Slip was situated at the Eastern end of the "Cribbwr Seam" - a vein of rich anthracite in the South Wales coalfields that began in Aberkenfig and traced a route between the ridge of Cefn Cribwr and the Margam mountain range, through the rural area of Penybryn to Port Talbot at its Western end, where it falls into the seas at Swansea Bay. The Seam was a notoriously unstable, yet rich source of coal, and served at least five collieries that I know of, probably more.

In the deepest workings of Parc Slip, the deadly "fire-damp" gas was frequently released from the ground as the miners disturbed the earth. Throughout August, several of the Colliery's firemen's reports noted the presence of gas in Districts 7 & 8 of the mine. At the start of the morning shift that day, a fireman in fact reported there was so much gas in the air of No. 8 East, that it was "to be in an explosive condition". Nevertheless, the men went underground that morning...

Shortly before half past eight, William Lyddon was leading a horse pulling a line of trams into No. 8 East. Unknown to him, his Davy lamp had a damaged gauze, and although the protective shield surrounding the lamp was intact, the flame inside was essentially exposed to the open, gassy air, of the mine. The naked flame inside William's faulty lamp ignited the firedamp, causing an explosion that ripped through District 8 of the mine, both East and West sides. William died instantly, taking with him the 27 other men working in that District.

The explosion ignited the gaseous air in further Districts of the mine, sending clouds of dust and smoke up to the surface where they billowed into the morning air as the flames belched out of the ground. The earth apparently shook for miles around, causing people to come from the neighbouring villages - every man, woman and child in the mining community would have known what the tremors, and the smoke rising from the Colliery, meant.

In total, the explosion claimed the lives of 112 men and boys, the youngest being just 13 years of age. The local villages for miles across the county of what is now Bridgend were devastated. Every community lost somebody, many families lost multiple members. The Lyddon family of Fountain Cottages lost six men in the disaster, including 22-year-old William, but the effects on our family were far greater...

In his book "The Park Slip Explosion" (Picton Press, 1992) the writer and historian Neville Granville describes our family as a "clan - for the victims were cousins to one another as well as brothers". My own research into our family tree that stretches back to the 1600's, indeed shows that the family was a tight-knit, inter-related "clan" from the parish of Brompton Ralph in Somerset, England, members of whom had journeyed to the South Wales coalfields in search of work only a generation before the Parc Slip Explosion.

Although it is supposition, reading between the lines, I think that the clan retreated back to Somerset with their tails between their legs. Although it was the responsibility of George Tout, the colliery lamp man that morning, to check that the lamps were fit for purpose, history records William Lyddon as being responsible for the explosion at Park Slip. I can only imagine that the family would have born the brunt of the grief and frustration of the local communities, and that is why many of them left the area and returned to Somerset.

Decades later, my grandfather was born in the tiny parish of Wiveliscombe, Somerset, where William Lyddon and his generation had been born in the previous century. It was my grandfather's generation, I believe, that was the first to move back into the Bridgend area, where they still had relatives. As far as I can recall, it was never discussed during my childhood - the events of 1892 were probably consigned to history, never to be discussed among the family again.

That is, until the centenary commemoration in 1992, when I was nine years old. Schools in the county taught the Explosion as part of their local history curriculum, and one of the teachers in my primary school rather tactfully told people that my grandfather "blew up a mine and killed loads of people" which as you can imagine went down like a lead balloon. The same year a new memorial was unveiled at the Parc Slip Nature Reserve, built on the land where the Colliery once stood. It is a cascading waterfall that consists of 112 stone bricks, one for each life lost.

I have visited the memorial twice - but never on the anniversary of the Explosion - the wounds run deep in the local area: names and histories are still remembered, and the event is (rightly) commemorated every year. The Park Slip explosion is by no means the only disaster to have claimed lives along the Cribbwr Seam, nor is it by any means the largest disaster in the South Wales Coalfields, but it is the one that I am connected to by blood, both literally and figuratively.