SULTAN PIT PONY
Caerphilly, South Wales ST 13142 95415
A giant pony shaped from coal fragments is a
poignant reminder of the underground industry
that put Britain ahead of the world
The pony sculpture, affectionately nicknamed ‘Sultan’ after a well-loved pit pony
from the local mines, is more than 200 m long. Built out of coal shale from those
mines, it is a reminder of an industrial past that changed Britain, and the world,
forever. Coal was the fuel of the Industrial Revolution; coalpowered steam
engines put Britain ahead of the world for more than a hundred years in the 19th
and early 20th centuries. The steam engines were probably one of Britain’s
greatest contributions to human history.
And coal also fuelled an Empire
that spanned every continent
except Antarctica. For good
reasons and bad, it was a
remarkable achievement.
Pit ponies were traditionally used to pull
the carts of mined coal from the coal face
to the lifts. © Getty Images
Hazardous and unhealthy Britain is endowed with high quality coal, but it is not
the easiest to mine. Deep, narrow seams, difficult to access, made mining a
hazardous and unhealthy job. In the early days miners often had to work long
shifts at the coal face and were in constant fear of the gas leaks and cave-ins
that took the lives of many of their colleagues. The conditions were summed up
well by George Orwell in ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, written in 1937:
“Most of the things one imagines in hell are there - heat, noise, confusion,
darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space.”
After 1842 only men and boys over the age of 10
were allowed to work in the mines. Before then,
women and children were also overworked,
oppressed and forced even to crawl dragging the
coal carts along behind them. © Corbis
Decline of the coal industry Production from across Britain’s coalfields - South
Wales, north and north east England - peaked in 1913 at a staggering 300 million
tonnes. The number of miners increased dramatically too, from 300,000 in 1865
to around 1.2 million in 1920. This contrasts starkly with our current coal
production of around 20 million tones (half of this from surface workings) and just
5,000 people employed. Only a third of the coal burned in Britain today is British,
the rest is imported from countries such as Russia, Colombia and South Africa.
The closure of many mines in the 1970s and 1980s and the massive
unemployment this caused led to violent strikes that were one of the defining
issues for Margaret Thatcher’s government.
Half of Britain’s coal production
today comes from open cast mining,
mostly in Scotland.
DID YOU KNOW?
The Sultan Pit Pony is one of the largest earth sculptures in Europe.
The deepest coal mine shaft ever sunk in the UK was to 1,400 m at Clock
Face Colliery in Lancashire.
British coal seams are thin because the tropical rainforest trees that formed
them were laid down in layers in swampy deltas, with river sands and muds in
between.
British coal has a high sulphur content. When the coal burns, the sulphur gas
given off combines with rainwater to form weak sulphuric acid, also known as
‘acid rain’. This can damage life in rivers and lakes, and plants.
© Content created and copyright of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)