File: 2015003-0090
Big Pit National Coal Museum, Blaenavon, Gwent, Wales, United Kingdom, on Thursday 9th April 2015.
Pwll Mawr Amgueddfa Lofaol, Blaenafon, Cymru, Deyrnas Unedig, Dydd lau 9 Ebrill 2015.
Chapter 1 talks about the photograph and why I took it, if you want to know more in-depth history about the subject, feel free to skip to Chapter 2.
Chapter 1: About the photograph
As well as being a photographer, I am also a graphic designer. At that time I took the above photographs, I put my careers on hold, because I was a busy single parent looking after two kids.
Whenever I get time to spare, I make every effort to keep up my photography and graphic design skills, by doing some projects while I can. Not only to improve my skills, but also to gain more experience, and build up a portfolio too.
The kind of graphic design work I do mostly varies, but generally tend to be like book covers, movie posters, packaging designs, etc.
The above photographs were for an album art design, as part of a CD case cover project.
The subject of the non-existence and fictional album is about a female singer-songwriter, who used to live in an old industrial town during her childhood days, and decided to leave her hometown, to seek stardom in the world of music.
The name of the album is The Old Dying Town. It is supposed to imply that the coal mines have dried up, the factories closed down, the town lost its cinema and nightlife, and too many people leaving. The town could easily become a ghost town.
For the design theme of the album art, I needed black and white photos of old buildings, abandoned factories, disused railway stations, and anything like that.
When the kids were at school, I drove for about an hour and half, over to Blaenavon in the south part of Wales, where they had this old coal mine that had been turned into a museum.
I wasn’t planning on buying a ticket to go in for a look around, I only needed exterior background for the album art design, so I walked around and took many shots from various viewpoints.
Hence the title Big Pit Background.
It was a very warm spring day with clear blue skies, which is why most of the shots shows cloudless background.
I had my camera set to black and white mode rather than left it in colour mode, and simply use computer software to convert into black and white. Most likely because of a lifetime of habit of using either black and white, or colour film in a camera.
The above photograph is one of the many exterior shots I took, around the National Coal Museum. It was better to take many shots around, and then see which shots I could use for the album art design.
After I took the photos of the coal museum, I took a walk over to a heritage railway station, about 5 minutes away by a footpath, and there I took some photos of disused railway stock, like boxcars and carriages, plus the railway station.
Chapter 2: The History of the Big Pit National Coal Museum.
It started life in the early 1800s, originally as an iron mine.
At that time, the mine was driven horizontally into the side of the mountain, because of the shallow iron deposits, unlike most mines where the shaft is usually dug vertically. The shaft was dug by hand because dynamite wasn’t invented until few decades later, and it became known as the Engine Pit Level.
The Big Pit was part of a network of mines, set up by the Blaenavon Iron and Coal Company in the first half of the 19th century, as part of the Blaenavon Ironworks, and was considered to be the most important of all the collieries in the area.
By around the 1850s, the location was stating to become more of a coal mine, and the original Engine Pit Level was then used as an escape route and emergency exit.
It was large enough to allow two tramways, and by the time of 1878, the main shaft was deepened to reach older coal at around 293 feet (89 metres).
An inspector for the mines made a report in 1881, was the first to describe the mine as a big pit, because of the underground shape of the mine, this was how the mine got its name of Big Pit.
In 1923, at its most peak life, there were about 1400 men working there, producing house coal, steam coal, ironstone, and fireclay. The peak production as more than 250,000 tons of coal every year. They even shipped coats to as far as South American, and to other points around the world.
The work was done by hand and manpower, until around 1908 when a conveyor system became part of the equipment, and it was one of the first to install electricity. By around 1910, the fans, hauling system, and pumps were all electric powered.
During the 1940s, baths were installed at the mines, so the workers no longer need to walk home dirty, and during the Second World War, equipment and skilled men from the Canadian Army helped out.
After the end of the Second World War, the National Coal Board took over the mine from Blaenavon Co. Ltd, in 1947, as part of a nationalisation. At that time, the mine employed 789 men.
But by about the 1970s, only 500 men worked there, and it finally closed on 2nd February 1980 with a loss of 250 jobs.
Before it was closed down, a group of people had been planning on turning it into a heritage site, so when the mine closed down, it was bought for £1 and given to a charitable trust called Big Pit (Blaenavon) Trust to manage the changes into a heritage museum.
When it opened to the public in 1983. The museum drew about up to 90,000 visitors a year in the 1990s, and after improvements, could hit up to about 140,000 visitors in 2010s.
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