Looking north: 180 years ago there was a coal mine, a lime kiln, and two tall chimneys standing up above the now tree-clad shoreline, and a railway across the causeway.
Howell Harris
A quiet quay on the Daugleddau hides the worst mining tragedy in Pembrokeshire’s history. Forty men and boys died in minutes when the Garden Pit roof failed and the river poured in.
On a recent holiday in the Daugleddau stretch of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, we finally visited a place long glimpsed from Picton Point: Landshipping Quay.
Today, at the end of a narrow lane, it feels neglected and serene. But 180 years ago this shoreline carried a different profile — a coal mine, a lime kiln, two tall chimneys above the trees, and a railway over the causeway. To the south stood two mines, the Garden and Orielton pits, where ships loaded thousands of tons of anthracite each year.
Down by the river a recent memorial marks a catastrophe little known even to regular visitors. The Garden Pit Colliery Disaster killed 40 men and boys in an instant — the highest single-event death toll in Pembrokeshire’s mining history, and significant even by national standards.
Roughly a quarter of the parish’s mining workforce perished that afternoon when the thin rock roof over a shallow coal seam failed and the river broke through.
The Garden Pit Disaster Memorial – Landshipping Quay. Photo by welshbabe is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
What stops you in your tracks is the second plaque, listing names and ages. The youngest was four. Four victims were under ten — below the legal minimum under the 1842 Coal Mines Act.
Fifteen were aged 10–15; ten more were 16–20. The remaining eleven were adults — eight in their working prime, three men aged 51, 55 and 58 in a community where lung disease often killed miners in their forties.
Many shared surnames: fathers, sons, brothers, cousins. Ten belonged to the interrelated Cole and Picton families. Underground, work was organised by family teams. Men hewed coal at the face; boys learned by hauling “drams,” opening ventilation doors and doing auxiliary tasks. Women and girls laboured at the surface. The family bond recruited, trained and disciplined — and it meant they died together. The mine manager that day was James Cole, almost certainly kin to several of the dead.
Valentine’s Day, 1844
On 14 February 1844 the mine reopened after a winter stoppage. Manager James Cole sent men and boys back to the Bright (or Tumbling) Vein, a 4 ft 6 in seam just 60 feet down — long considered too wet and unsafe, not least because inflows were salt. Deeper workings in the Timber Vein (about 7 ft thick) lay far below, at the pit bottom, demanding more pumping and haulage.¹
That morning, miners reportedly noticed unusually strong saltwater ingress and came to the surface. According to one survivor (writing decades later), Cole reassured them and ordered a return — or they would not work for him again. An hour later, the river and mud burst into the mine.
Between two and three o’clock, with the flood tide still rising, people at the pithead saw violent commotion on the water near the quay.
A blast of air roared up the 67-yard shaft, lifting a man’s outstretched arm. Below ground, lights were extinguished and men blown off their feet as the roof failed and seawater tore in. The fall was close to the shaft. Thirty-three of the dead were working beyond the inrush, on a 1-in-3 dip extending a quarter mile under the river — killed within moments by drowning or collapse.
Of the 25 who had a chance, 18 reached the shaft (four men, fourteen boys). Some scrambled up; others clung to the man-carrying bucket. The whim driver, thinking fast, lashed his horses into a gallop and hauled them out before the shaft filled. Flooding rose at seven fathoms (42 ft) a minute; in just over four minutes the 200-ft shaft was a churning column of filthy water and debris. Interconnected workings at Landshipping Quay flooded rapidly too. A stunned quiet followed — then the cries of survivors and bereaved.²
“A melancholy accident” — or gross negligence?
Early reports framed this as a “melancholy accident,” blaming the “weight of water” and even the spring tide, and stressing that the district had barely been worked that day — as if that absolved all responsibility.³ ⁴ Yet the inrush happened before high water; tides alone cannot explain it.
Roger Farnworth’s map of the Landshipping pit complex in its heyday, pre-1844. The diagonal lines indicate the underground workings flooded by the February 1844 disaster, to which one can add those under the river shown on the mine map, below. “Railways in West Wales Part 1A — Pembrokeshire — Before the Railway Age,” September 2022
Contemporary experts and later engineers were blunt. The roof cover above the Bright Vein was only 3–4 feet of rock, with 40–60 feet of sand and mud above that. To resume work there, near a fault, under a riverbank and in a dipping seam with copious water, was “indiscreet” at best, “most imprudent” at worst.⁵ ⁶
Modern understanding calls this a void migration failure: a roof fall opens a growing void that rises until it breaks through to overlying sediments, forming a crown hole. In dipping seams with heavy inflow, the void does not self-choke; instead, it tears upward. At Landshipping, the mine broke into the river, not the other way round. The result is the same; the cause was human error under pressure, compounded by bad luck.⁷
Why most victims weren’t named — and why there was no inquest
Newspapers largely named adult men who left dependants likely to become parish charges; boys were often listed only by a parent’s name (“Joseph Thomas lost one boy; widow Davies two,” and so on). The practice later fed suspicions of a cover-up of under-tens underground. More likely, it reflected the grim arithmetic of poor-law liability.⁸
There was no inquest because no bodies were recovered — and, under the law then, no bodies meant no coroner’s inquest. Justices of the Peace could have investigated; they rarely did. Even when inquiries were held in other disasters, verdicts too often labelled deaths “accidental,” shielding culpable practice rather than exposing it.⁹
Collections and subscriptions — including royal patronage — raised almost £400, a better outcome than the customary guinea and a coffin. But the big story, after those first reports, fell silent.
Endnotes — Part 1
The Cambrian, 17 Feb 1844, p.2; Pembrokeshire Herald, 16 Feb 1844, p.3.
Weekly Despatch, 18 Feb 1844, p.1 (Haverfordwest correspondent); Pembrokeshire Herald, 23 Feb 1844, p.3.
Pembrokeshire Herald, 16 Feb 1844, p.3.
The Annual Register for 1844, Chronicle, p.18.
Matthias Dunn, Coal Trade of the North of England (1844), pp.101–102; Treatise on the Winning and Working of Collieries (1848), p.232; House of Lords Select Committee (1849), pp.495–496.
Mark Fryar, “Safety Operations Against Water in Mines,” in Lectures… Bristol Mining School 1857 (1859), p.102; Y Diwygiwr, 104 (Mawrth 1844), p.97; Carmarthen Journal (press clipping via Welsh Coal Mines website).
R.I. Murchison, The Silurian System (1839), p.372; W.S. Boulton (ed.), Practical Coal-Mining, vol.2 (1907), p.334; P.L. Younger, “‘Making Water’,” in 200 Years of British Hydrogeology (2004), pp.121–157.
Pembrokeshire Herald, 23 Feb 1844, p.3.
Joshua Richardson, On the Prevention of Accidents in Mines (1848), pp.76–82.
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