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Culture

Call to develop Welsh museum at what was once deepest anthracite mine in World

22 Nov 2022 3 minute read
Museum and culture expert Chris Delaney has recommended Neath Port Talbot Council should retain Cefn Coed Colliery Museum and make it a visitor attraction. Picture: Neath Port Talbot Council.

A disused Welsh museum, at what was once the deepest anthracite mine in the world, should be kept and made into a visitor attraction, an expert has recommended.

Museum and culture expert Chris Delaney has recommended Neath Port Talbot Council should retain Cefn Coed Colliery Museum and make it a visitor attraction and gateway to the local area as part of its developing Heritage Strategy.

The museum, near Crynant in the Dulais Valley, is currently closed due to health and safety issues requiring more than £1m of remedial building works. 

Chris Delaney and Associates was appointed to look at future options for the museum, which in 1930, was the deepest anthracite mine in the world.

The Welsh Government owns the land at the museum site, but the council leases the buildings and car park on a 100-year lease which started in the 1980s.

In his report, Mr Delaney outlined three options for the museum:

  • Option A – Using the whole former colliery site including the museum buildings for non-heritage use such as shopping or housing with the listed pit headgear providing ‘wow factor’.
  • Option B  – Using the site as a heritage facility, but with several sub-options ranging from minimal investment and use, through to a large investment to create a major visitor destination and attraction.
  • Option C – Negotiating a favourable surrender of the lease, removing the collections into storage and letting Welsh Government/Cadw decide on the future of the site.

‘Significant survival’

Mr Delaney, recommending option B, said: “Cefn Coed Colliery is a significant survival from the coal industry in Wales and is worthy of preservation. 

“It is one of a small group, from the hundreds of collieries in Wales, that survive as distinct monuments to the industry and are accessible today as museums.”

He added the colliery museum, as well as being revived as a visitor attraction, could become a gateway locally for recreation, wellbeing and learning and that it could, as well as telling the story of coal in the Dulais Valley, also focus on other historic local industries and examine their environmental and social impact.

In his report, Mr Delaney said adopting Option B would underpin Neath Port Talbot’s new Heritage Strategy which is currently being developed by arts consultants Counterculture.

He advised that as the museum could be suitable for accreditation, it would be eligible for grants which could be used to develop the museum.

And he forecast – if sufficient grant funding was available – a possible growth in average annual visitor numbers from 8,432 to 37,870 after five years.

The report will be discussed by the council’s Education, Skills and Wellbeing Cabinet Board on 24 November.


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Ann
Ann
1 year ago

NPT has a great industrial heritage , combined with incredible scenery. It is vital that the colliery, along with the various metalwork, the canals and abbeys, along with other historic remains, such as Sarn Helen, are included in the new Heritag Strategy

Kerry Davies
Kerry Davies
1 year ago
Reply to  Ann

Running right behind the site is the Dulais valley rail line being opened up for the Global Centre of Rail Excellence up at Onllwyn next to the Walters Arena motorsport centre. Join the dots?

Julian Holmes
Julian Holmes
1 year ago

Should get it open and start to sort out this self made energy problem. We need coal not museums.

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