Morfa: In Memory of Lives Lost

Morfa Colliery was sunk on Margam Moors (now situated within the town of Port Talbot, South Wales) between 1847 and 1849 by Messrs. Vivian & Sons to feed their expanding copperworks at Taibach. It was known as a 'gassy' and a 'fiery' mine and there were six explosions there between its opening and closure in 1913.

More than 200 men, boys and one woman died at Morfa during those years and a memorial to them has been erected, near to the original site of the mine, within the TATA Steel plant in Port Talbot. 

The following poem, written for a memorial service held on site on 8th March, 2019, will appear in Remembering Morfa: Stories of Coal, Catastrophe & Courage by myself and Port Talbot family historian, Allen Blethyn, to be published at the end of 2020. 

Mrs Peppin

John Peppin, b.1857, was one of 87 men killed in the Morfa Colliery Explosion on 10^th March 1890. His body was not found until December 1894, one of the last to be recovered. Between five and nine men remain entombed in the old workings.  

Mary Ann Peppin’s hat, shawl and jacket, which she wore to her husband’s funeral on 15th December 1894, are held in a collection at the National Museum of Wales.

It is an unearthly thing to bury a man

almost five years dead. You swing

from cold grief to release, from the ache

you still carry in your blood and bones

to the comfort of the hymn you sing

in the Chapel of Ease. It is cold today.

Your two youngest girls, four and six,

have stayed at home. The two boys

fidget next to you on the wooden pew,

the memories of their Dad as faint

as ghosts. Your eldest stares ahead,

her face as pale as your jacket’s lace trim.

And all the years between then and now

spill their dread and fear through

this vault of stone and glass:

the first news of the blast hammered

on your door in Brick Row, the two miles

you ran in the coal-black dark,

breath nettling in your throat, to join

the other women praying and crying

at the mouth of the pit. You kept vigil

for as long as you could until

your breasts ached with so much milk

you ran home again to feed the baby.

You remember the candles in the windows:

West End, Chapel Row, Inkerman,

the Constant, flickers of hope and pain,

and Mrs Jenkins weeping for days

through the Row’s thin walls after

her boy was brought up dead. And on

it went, weeks, months, and then the years:

men recovered from the seams and delivered

back to earth. The mind has curious ways.

Even after they flooded the pit,

some mornings you’d wake sure

of seeing his sweat-streaked face.

You never did again.

Not after they came on Tuesday

and told you he’d been found tucked

in an air-pocket in the Cribbwr seam. 

‘In a wonderful state of preservation,’

someone said and someone else

kicked him in the leg. And not

when Roderick’s brought the coffin:

you told them to be sure it was sealed.

The vicar’s drawing to a close.

You stand and watch the bearers take

your husband’s weight upon their shoulders,

and draw your children near. Poor dabs.

And not just yours. How many was it?

200 one paper said. And 69 widows.

Outside the chapel a sudden gust

lifts the ribbons on your hat, black

streams of silk in the wounding winter air.

The ground is hard beneath your feet.

You make yourself smile

for your children’s sake, look them

in their trembling eyes and think

about the men still waiting to be found.

‘Your Dad’s home,’ you say.