Welsh Journals

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With the striking of coal in the Charles Pit as well in June 1904 Tirdonkin was well on the way to becoming fully operational, and in 1905 it first appeared as a working colliery in the List of Mines. The next few years were a period of expansion for the TCC, but they were also years of heavy financial demands. As has been seen, sinking continued to the 6 ft. seam in both shafts. The striking of this seam in the Gladys Pit in 1908 meant that both seams were in production and the original intention of the company had been realised, but to achieve this it had been necessary to borrow heavily. Jenkins continued to lend money to the company from his own estate, and large sums were borrowed from the Capital & Counties Bank under his guarantee. At this stage money was being invested in the colliery all the time, but it was not yet sufficiently prooductive to return any sort of profit. In August 1906, at the Annual General Meeting of the TCC, Lord Glantawe (as he had become earlier that year) reported that in the previous year there had been a loss of £ 3,428, but that the colliery was beginning to pay. The total output from the entire concern (Cefngyfelach and Tirdonkin) in 1905 had been 124,203 tons and for the first half of 1906 the yield had been 94,253 tons, or an annual rate of nearly 190,000 tons. Even so, this was still far short of the 1,000 tons a day which had been forecast for Tirdonkin alone when that pit had been commenced, and even further below the 2,000 tons a day that it was equipped to handle. At some date between 1908 and 1911 Cefngyfelach was abandoned. The evidence is ambiguous: either parts of the workings in the 6 ft. and 3 ft. seams were abandoned in 1908, followed by total abandonment in 1911, or else the pit was closed down completely in 1908, but the plans were not deposited with the Home Office, as required by law, until 1911. The South Wales Coal Annual for 1909/10 (compiled in the middle of 1909) lists Cefngyfelach, but the 1911 edition (compiled mid-1910) does not include it. On the other hand, the TCC's advert in the 1911 Annual still shows Cefngyfelach as being in work. Fortunately, not a great deal depends on establishing the precise date. In any case, even after Cefngyfelach was abandoned as a productive colliery, it seems to have been retained as a ventilation shaft and as an emergency exit from the network of interconnecting workings in the area. It was perhaps to compensate for the abandonment of Cefngyfelach that the Tirdonkin lease was increased from 600 acres to 1050 in 1909 alternatively, Cefngyfelach was closed because of this additional taking at its larger and newer neighbour. The Tirdonkin lease was extended again in 1912 to 1450 acres, and on that occasion a new, 60-year lease was taken out. Also in the years immediately before the first World War some improvements were made to the TCC's railway. In 1908 the GWR started to construct its heavily engineered and well aligned Swansea District Line to serve both as a Swansea by-pass for the Fishguard boat