TOWER COLLIERY LIMITED

Tower Colliery (Welsh: Glofa'r Tŵr) was the oldest continuously working deep-coal mine in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world, until its closure in 2008. William Williams began producing house coal, manufacturing coal and fireclay from a drift mine here named Tower Graig in 1864. In 1878 Tower colliery opened by the Bute Trustees. From the Inspector of Mines list of 1896 Tower Graig colliery was discontinued. Also from the same list, Tower Colliery owned by the Marques of Bute, producing steam coal with a workforce of 420 men. In 1994 British Coal closed the colliery because they thought it would be uneconomical to keep it working. However a successful bid was made for the colliery by a buy-out group formed by the workforce and in 1995 they produced 450,000 tons of high grade anthracite, making over 4 million in pre-tax profit. Tower, the last deep mine in Wales, closed on the 25th of January 2008.