GB. Wales. Tower Collery. Tower Colliery was the oldest continuously working deep-coal mine in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world, and the last mine of its kind to remain in the South Wales Valleys.

Led by local NUM Branch Secretary Tyrone O'Sullivan, 239 miners joined TEBO with each pledging £8,000 from their redundancy payouts to buy back Tower. Against stiff central government resistance to the possibility of reopening the mine as a coal production unit, a price of £2 million was eventually agreed.
On 3 January 1995 the Colliery re-opened Philip Weekes, the renowned Welsh mining engineer, was a key advisor to the buy-out team and became unpaid Chairman.

Having mined out the northern coal extracts, the colliery was last worked on 18 January 2008 and the official closure of the colliery occurred on 25 January.[8] The colliery was, until its closure, one of the largest employers in the Cynon Valley.

Mine workers underground and at the colaface.

1996