Work and Win Committee Cwmtillery Colliery 1878

Cwmtylery Work and Win Committee 1878.
(Back row) Mr D. Smith; M. Wallace; Mrs Rees; (Unknown); Mr W. Townsend and Mr Rhys Jones.

(Second row) Mr George Stafford; Mr J. Thompson; Mr A. Watkins; Mr Thomas Wright; Mr L. Lewis; Mr Joe Rogers and Mr H. Lloyd.

(Sitting) Mr W. Sutcliffe;  Mr J. Brown (Fireman); Mr Sam Taylor (Manager in charge of the Cwmtillery Coke Works); Mr J. Wallace (Manager); Dr Hayes (Collieries Doctor); Mr Mark Hill; Mr J. Wiltshire (Colliery Overman and Superintendent of the West Bank Methodists Church Sunday School):

The committee had for their coat of arms the design of a “Spade and Mattock” with the motto “Work and Win”.  First mentioned in reports in 1874. The Work and Win flag flew over the Rose Heyworth Colliery at the time of its sinking in 1874.

Mr Joseph Wallace (pictured seated center) was the general manager and along with Mr William Adams M.E. of Cardiff drove a tunnel from Cwmtillery Colliery to Rose Heyworth to connect the two collieries for ventilation purposes in 1875.

Notes of Interest  – Over the years the name of Cwmtillery has been spelt differently from Cwmtyleri, Cwmtilery to Cwmtillery. No one knew where the name derived from, though a story I recently unearthed while researching, shows a Gazette Newspaper report from 1888 in which the reporter gave an account of Princess Leri (Eleri?), the daughter of Ap Brychan, King of Brecon in the 5th century a.d. Princess Eleri settled in the valley and had a house built for her at the top end of the valley by a brook. Her house was Ty-Leri (the House of Leri in Welsh) the reporter went on to say the house ruins were still visible in the year of 1888 but were being consumed with the increasing waste from the numerous coal levels in that area.