remembering Senghennydd

[llywela]

One hundred years ago today, there was an explosion at the Universal Colliery in Senghennydd, in South Wales, just after 8am. There were 950 men working underground at the time; 439 of them were killed, along with one unfortunate rescuer. Most of the bodies were never found. It was the worst mining disaster in British history - I was born more than 60 years later and yet grew up with the knowledge of that day as part of my consciousness - and today the anniversary of the disaster will be remembered.

My great-grandfather Arthur (seen in this icon) and his parents George and Georgina had just moved to South Wales from Norfolk a few weeks before the disaster. Living in the next valley, they heard the explosion. George and Arthur, who'd have been 14 at the time, both ran over the mountain trail to see what was happening and if there was anything they could do. There wasn't.

My mum later inherited a stack of old postcards that Arthur had collected, throughout his life, and among the collection are these postcards bought in 1913 to commemorate the Senghennydd disaster (although he got some of the details wrong when he wrote on the back - it was harder to verify facts in a pre-digital age!).