Preece Family Tree

Thomas Griffiths, Maesgwyn

While, apart from the very early days, a rise from the ranks to coalownership was comparatively rare, the same was not true of a rise from the ranks to a professional managership in the heydey of the mining valleys. Here, the progression from doorboy to manager was still comparatively common. Philip Jones, for example, who became manager of that vast enterprise the Albion Colliery Cilfynydd, had started work at a doorboy when seven years old. John Thomas Fernbank started work underground when nine years old, became a fireman, then achieved a manager's certificate before becoming manager and agent of Standard Collieries Ynyshir. But Thomas Griffiths's was the most remarkable of such careers. He achieved enormous influence on the life of the valleys, in a wide variety of rules.

He was born in 1849 at Bettws near Bridgend. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Hafod, just south-east of Porth. When he left school at the age of 11 in 1860, Griffiths started in Insole's Cymmer Colliery as a doorboy. Thereafter, he worked for ten years at the coalface, becoming a fireman in 1869. He had already determined to better himself, however, and to that end undertook part-time study, becoming a qualified mining engineer and securing a manager's certificate by examination.

In the early 1870s, he moved away from the area, but returned to Cymmer in 1875 as engineer for the sinking of the Cymmer Old Pit to the steam-coal levels. Within two years he was the manager of the Cymmer collieries. His managerial qualification had served him in good stead, because the Mines Regulation Act 1872 had made this a stipulation for new managers.

By the 1880s, he was heavily involved in the whole Insole mining business, of which he had become a director. While continuing to serve them as a mining engineer (it was he who sank their new pit at Abertridwr, the Windsor Colliery, in the 1890s), he was also involved in their strategic thinking. Meanwhile, in Porth, he rapidly gained the reputation of one of the leading figures in local society. He lived in a large house called Maesgwyn. For over 40 years he was a close friend and associate of W. H. Mathais, and was part of the Welsh-speaking society which was at the centre of Porth life. In 1882, he became a member of the Ystradyfodwg Urban Sanitary Authority, of which he was to remain a member, under its various guises culminating in the Rhondda Urban District Council, for about 40 years, and on which he was to exert enormous influence.

His role had long exceeded that of a manager and became in part that of an owner. His influence stretched throughout south Wales. By 1911, he was president of the South Wales and Monmouthshire Coalowners Association, and playing a leading part in the strike negotiatons of that year. He also became a life member of the South Wales Institute of Engineers.

In 1924, he retired to the Gower, where he died three years later at the age of 78.

In 1877 the Cymmer colliery had a new manager, who satisfied the spirit and the letter of the Mines Regulation Act 1872 by having secured a manager's certificate by examination. Thomas Griffiths was a professional mining engineer, who succeeded Jabez Thomas when he retired. Jabez Thomas had served the Insoles for nearly fifty years from George Insole's first ventures on the canal wharf at Cardiff. It was probably his knowledge of coal mining, albeit without any formal qualifications, which made him useful to his employers; he seems, however, to have been both insensitive in his handling of subordinate managers and workers and slipshod in his supervision and administration. On two events, he bears responsibility for a serious industrial dispute and a mining disaster. He was a founder and leading member of Bethlehem, the Calvinistic Methodist chapel in Cymmer, whose first congregation came with him from Maesmawr to Cymmer in 1844. After his retirement he continued to live next to the colliery office in a house in Three-quarters Row, with his wife Ann, who was some nine years his junior and, like him, came from the Vale of Glamorgan. He died in 1885 at the age of 87.

Thomas Griffiths was a different type of man; he was born in 1849 at Bettws near Bridgend but, by the time he left school in 1860, his family had moved to Hafod. He started work at Cymmer as a door-boy and worked for ten years at the coal-face. He became a fireman in 1869 and so started a professional career, which saw him rise to the positions of overman and agent and to the acquisition of a manager's certificate, through part-time education and private study. He had left Cymmer in the course of his progress but in 1872 he married the daughter of John Williams of Pen Rhos and he returned to work at Cymmer in 1875, possibly as engineer for the sinking of Cymmer Old to the steam coals. He was a member of the South Wales Institute of Engineers and of the Cardiff Naturalists' Society, whom he entertained at Cymmer in 1885. By that time he had been elected to the Ystradyfodwg Urban Sanitary Authority, so starting a long career of public service in local government. He was to be involved not only in colliery management but also in the direction of the Insole mining businesses over the next forty years. The Insole's management of their collieries was always more distant than the control of their sales office and both Jabez Thomas and Thomas Griffiths enjoyed a considerable measure of freedom and delegated authority in running them. Griffiths was an early beneficiary of improvements in the professional education of engineers in South Wales, which had been fostered by the South Wales Institute of Engineers.[1]

[1] Walters, South Wales Steam Coal Industry, pp. 181-4.