On 23 June 1894, ten to four in the afternoon, two loud bangs were heard in Cilfynydd, the result of a devastating explosion at the Albion colliery. The colliery had given birth to the village. After the sinking of the first mine shaft, the population had increased from 500 within a decade and was around 3,500 by 1901. Yet, on this day, the colliery extracted a terrible toll from the local community. The instant response to the explosion was confusion. The night shift had just started. No-one knew how many men were down the pit. When bodies were brought up, they were, in many cases, so badly mutilated that is was impossible to determine identity.

Altogether, 290 men were killed in the Albion mining disaster, making it the second-worst mining disaster in Wales, and the fourth-worst in the UK. I say 'men', but many of the victims were in their teens. The youngest, John Scott, was aged just 13. The scale of the devastation is also highlighted by the fact that just two of the 125 horses that worked underground survived. The cause was determined to be the ignition of coal dust following an explosion of fire damp. The management exonerated in what many felt to be a whitewash. Albion colliery carried on working, claiming the lives of miners, but let us not forget this devastating disaster that occurred 125 years ago, which touched everyone living in Cilfynydd and changed lives forever.