Thank you to everyone who got in touch regarding last week’s Mystery Photograph where we were in Upper Conygre Coal Mine, Timsbury.

Lucy Tudor has told The Journal about the scene: “According to Down And Warrington’s book “The History of the Somerset Coalfield”, six proprietors agreed on the 24th January 1791 to sink the pit at Upper Conygre. Not long after this, the colliery’s claim to fame was that a lump of coal weighing around 1.27 tonnes was brought to the surface by steam power only.

“The colliery was designed so as not to disrupt the view from Timsbury Manor (1610-1961) and as you can see from the photo, the chimney was embellished with a castellated design. Interestingly, a false boundary wall was built which comprised of two parallel stone walls not far apart, the space in-between the two walls was infilled with small pieces of coal and trees were planted on the top. Years later, part of the stone façade of the wall tumbled down revealing the coal infill. During a strike, miners took the coal from the wall to burn at home and much of the wall disappeared.

“When Lower Conygre Colliery was built, a tunnel connected the two collieries. On Wednesday, 6th February 1895 there was an underground explosion midway between the two collieries and the force blew the cage up the shaft at Upper Conygre which then fell back down and jammed.

“The rescue party of six local colliery managers discovered the dreadful scene of pit props blown away resulting in roof collapses and coal tubs smashed to pieces, plus the remains of seven men and four pit ponies. The inquest on March 4th, 1895 found that airborne coal dust had caused the explosion. Despite the company who owned the colliery taking special note of a report by the Inspector of Mines, to take proper precautions to avoid explosion from coal dust in connection with shot firing, the company was absolved from blame.”

Well done to the following for guessing correctly: Simon Chard, Paul Hancock, Eric Brain, Jeff Parsons, Dave Seddon, Christine Oatley, Ivor Davis, Richard Edwards, Judith Stanford, Jonathan Griffin.