Mardy Colliery
Welsh coal mine active 1875-1990
Maerdy Colliery was a coal mine located in the South Wales village of Maerdy (Welsh: Y Maerdy), in the Rhondda Valley, located in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, and within the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan, Wales. Opened in 1875, it closed in December 1990.
History
Maerdy derives its name from a large farmhouse on a bank of the Rhondda Fach, which became the local meeting place for both court matters and worship. Maerdy is the Welsh word for mayor's house.
While other areas of the South Wales coalfield had been exploited up to 50 years earlier, due to the scarcity and difficult access conditions of Rhondda Fach, it remained largely undeveloped. However, demand for steam coal drove development and, in 1874, Mordecai Jones of Brecon and Nantmelyn purchased the mineral rights around the farmhouse and its surrounding lands from the estate of the late Crawshay Bailey for £122,000. Additional capital was provided by a partner, J. R. Cobb, and a trial pit was sunk in 1875.
In 1876, this No. 1 Pit struck the Abergorky vein of coal. Proving the mine viable by increasing production to 100 tons per day, Maerdy No.
“Mardy Colliery” enters the record as welsh coal mine active 1875-1990. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mardy, Colliery and Welsh can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6758709. VIAF identifies the subject as 149343235. The Library of Congress control number is no2010127588. Authority coordinates are 51.680, -3.487. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1875, 1990, 1874 and 1876.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mardy Colliery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.