For a change (as I’ve not even picked up my camera for a month!), I thought I’d post a few scans from a fascinating Swedish book that a friend of mine sent me, which is a photo essay on the Welsh mining industry.  Unfortunately, I don’t speak a word of Swedish, but from what I can ascertain, these were all taken in Bargoed in South Wales in the mid-1970’s, when Wales still had a deep coal industry. The mine in Bargoed shut in 1977 and looking at the place on Geograph now there doesn’t seem an awful lot there, either where the mine was, or in Bargoed itself.

For many reasons, scenes like this are virtually a thing of the past in the UK, and it’s fascinating to get an insight into a community and an industry as it was, and had been for many years. However, although the mine had a few more years left to work, the book describes the somewhat run-down state of the place, indeed looking at the photos, much of the infrastructure appears to be pre-war, if not Victorian.  The 70’s did see a big investment in the industry, with major new facilities constructed in Yorkshire, but now only Selby remains in use.