IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Gyfeillon Road, PONTYPRIDD, CF37 2PP

View across the site at Hetty Pit / Great Western Mine. The 1950s fan house is on the right.

This is what remains of the 1950s Sirroco fan installation. The 12' 3" fan is the other side of the far wall. The cast bed plate carried a large electric motor that is long gone. The green disc is on the David Brown of Huddersfield speed reducing gear. The rusty metal cabinet contained the monitoring equipment for bearing temperatures. It is now an empty shell. Out of sight to the left is a rusty liquid resistor that used plates dipping into an electrolyte solution. The site was open for the Welsh equivalent of Heritage Open Days.

This engine was built in 1874 by the Uskside Engine Company of Newport.

A horizontal duplex geared winch built by Uskside Company, Newport and still workable on compressed air when photographed. The headgear and engine house of the Hetty Shaft are in the background. The winding engine in the house has now been preserved but the winch has suffered considerable degradation in the intervening 35 years.

View of the site, with the 1950s fan house in the foreground and the engine house and headgear behind.

Part of the former Great Western Colliery that was later part of the Lewis Merthyr - Ty Mawr complex. The winding engine house and head gear are listed Grade 1 and the house dates from 1875, the head gear is a later replacement. The fan and fan house in the foreground are 1950s vintage. Volunteers are restoring the site.

This is a 12' 3" diameter Sirocco fan that could extract 178,000 cubic feet of air per minute from Ty Mawr Colliery via the Hetty Shaft. This shaft had previously been a downcast but was changed to upcast with a new fan and fan house in the 1950s. This ran until closure in 1983. Volunteers restoring the winding engine at this site have recently re-roofed the fan house and tidied up the fan drift and it was open for the Welsh equivalent of Heritage Open Days. The air from the mine entered the eye of the fan and was expelled centrifugally up an evasee chimney. I have stood in this position with working fans and it is like being in a strong wind.

A glimpse of the pithead winding gear at the Great Western Colliery, Gyfeillion.

This room is part of the fan house and contained switch gear for various parts of the colliery. The site closed in 1983 and the intervening years have been non-too-kind.