Caedu Colliery Deaths

Caedu Colliery first produced bituminous house coal early in 1868; it worked the No. 2 Rhondda seam from its outcrop high up on Mynydd Llangeinor. It was opened by John Brogden and Sons.

A steam powered haulage at the surface of the colliery pulled empty trams up an incline, which ran up the mountainside from the standard gauge railway at the valley floor just north of the present day electrical sub station on North Road. The loaded trams were lowered down the incline for direct loading of the coal into railway wagons at a siding loop which also served the Tynewydd Colliery.

There were two drift mouths. The more southerly main drift was the ventilation intake roadway; a smaller drift with an associated air shaft provided furnace ventilation. The colliery was worked with naked lights.

The No. 2 Rhondda seam also outcropped on the Garw side of Mynydd Llangeinor where it was proved and the Fforchwen coal levels were opened about 1866 to work the seam. At that time there was no railway serving the Garw Valley to take coal to market. At first, a small steam locomotive named “John Grave” hauled the trams of coal from Fforchwen along a narrow gauge tramway across Mynydd Llangeinor almost a mile to the head of the Caedu Incline on the Ogmore valley side. They were then lowered by a fixed steam haulage down the incline over 1000 yards to a loading point on the railway behind where numbers 27 to 31, St. John Street, Ogmore Vale now stand.

Within a few years, underground connections were made between the workings of Fforchwen and those of Caedu colliery and the Fforchwen coal was taken through the Caedu roadways and lowered down the Caedu Colliery incline for loading at the railway below North Road. Consequently, the mountain locomotive tramway and the Caedu Incline became disused.

The Fforchwen Levels and Caedu Colliery were closed in April 1891.