Chronicle (1966)

The Last Seam at Blaenavon (1980x8)

: 26, 1980

Blaenavon is a small town in South Wales which for 200 years has existed by mining. It was one of the first Welsh iron towns. It shared in the great coal boom before World War I. And like most of South Wales it has lived through the long and painful process of industrial decline and change. Now Blaenavon is marketing its past by turning to tourism. Big Pit in Blaenavon will be the only Welsh colliery to be preserved as an underground museum. This film sketches in the history of Blaenavon against the background of the rise and long decline of the South Wales coal field and helps explain something of the miners' attitudes today.