The death of four miners in a Swansea Valley mine is the latest tragedy in a once notoriously dangerous industry.
Almost a century ago the worst mining disaster in UK history occurred, killing 439 men and boys working in Senghenydd, Glamorgan in 1913. A gas explosion wrecked the mine.
It took the unwanted title of worst disaster nearly half a century after the previous worst disaster – at Oaks Pit, in Barnsley, Yorkshire, on 12 December, 1866, when 361 workers died in two separate explosions.
Other major disasters include the deaths of 295 men at the Albion Colliery in Cilfynydd, Glamorgan, in a gas explosion in 1894.
At the Prince of Wales Colliery, in Abercarn, Monmouthshire, an explosion in September 1878 killed 270 men and boys out of the 350 who had began their shift that day.
