Underground coal mining is no more in South Wales, with the
last deep pit having closed in 2008. That does not mean that mining has left no
impression on the Welsh landscape, because the millions of tons of waste
material extracted from the mines had to go somewhere, and that meant the
construction of massive slag heaps that grew on the hillsides that separated
the Welsh valleys in which the mines were sunk.
In the years since the mines closed, huge efforts have been
made either to remove the slag heaps or to incorporate them into the landscape
– usually by planting trees to stabilize them and stop them being the eyesores
they once were.
However, some schemes have been particularly innovative, and
one such can be seen a few miles north of Caerphilly on the site of the former
Penallta Colliery. This is a land sculpture of a pit pony, created by Mick
Petts, a Welsh artist who has produced a number of similar works in other
places.
What he did was to spread the slag heap material into a
curved mound some 200 metres long and sculpt it into the features of a pony,
including its mane, tail and hooves. The project took three years to complete,
from 1996 to 1999.
The sculpture is a memorial to the many thousands of ponies
that were used to pull coal trucks deep underground. This was a practice that
declined during the later years of Welsh mining, although there were several
retired ponies still alive at the time that Mike Petts was creating his
sculpture. It was one these – Sultan – whose name has transferred to the sculpture.
Sultan the Pit Pony has a secondary function, which is to
provide a windbreak for the otherwise exposed playing field that is also part
of the re-landscaping of the Penallta colliery site.
The site is open to the public and many people enjoy walking
across “Sultan” from nose to tail tip!
©John Welford
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