The Big Pit

The National Coal Museum

What an incredible morning/afternoon spent at The Big Pit, had a look round the site then went on an underground tour of the pit.

Prepare to be lowered 90 metres (300 feet) down the Big Pit mineshaft for our famous underground tour - a captivating journey around a section of original underground workings.

Visitors wear the very same equipment – helmet, cap lamp, belt, battery and ‘self rescuer’ – used by miners. Take a seat in the miners Waiting Rooms before embarking on your journey.

The attached offices were used by the colliery manager and his senior staff. Most are still used for their original purposes, with the timekeeper’s office restored and the officials’ lodge converted into a first aid room.


The area around the top of the shaft, or the ‘pit bank’ as it is usually known, was always a noisy, busy place with men and materials descending the mine and drams of coal brought to the surface. It remains so today, with visitors setting off for and returning from their underground tours.

The Tram Circuit nearby is the route taken by the filled drams. Raised to the surface by cage, they ran along the rails and were turned upside down, emptying the coal on to screening belts to be graded into various sizes according to market requirements.

The modern Lamp Room is a working area, used to maintain and charge the electric cap lamps used by both visitors and staff. The Big Pit lamp man and his staff also look after that most easily recognised symbol of the coal industry – the flame safety lamp.


Today carried only by colliery officials as gas detectors, these lamps were once the miner’s only source of light.

Once underground, you will be guided (a 50-minute walk) around the coal faces, engine houses and stables in the company of a former coal miner.

Your guide will explain the different ways in which coal was mined and transported, and share some of his own experiences.


Big Pit is a real coal mine and one of Britain's leading mining museums.

With facilities to educate and entertain all ages, Big Pit is an exciting and informative day out. Enjoy a multi-media tour of a modern coal mine with a virtual miner in the Mining Galleries, exhibitions in the Pithead Baths and Historic colliery buildings open to the public for the first time.

All this AND the world-famous Underground Tour. Go 300 feet underground with a real miner and see what life was like for the thousands of men who worked at the coal face.

Big Pit became part of Amgueddfa Cymru on 1 February 2001. After major redevelopment, it re-opened in 2004 and went straight on to win the prestigious Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year.

The redevelopment turned the original features, like the Pithead Baths, into fresh displays that bring life at the coalface vividly into focus. However, perhaps its most famous feature is still the trip 90 metres down the shaft to explore working conditions underground.

An award-winning national museum that still retains many traits of its former role as a coal mine, standing high on the heather-clad moors of Blaenafon, the tunnels and buildings that once echoed to the sound of the miners now enjoy the sound of the footsteps and chatter of visitors from all over the world.

The Museum is set in a unique industrial landscape, designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000 in recognition of its international importance to the process of industrialisation through iron and coal production.

Big Pit is also an anchor point on the European Route of Industrial Heritage. The route comprises of 850 sites across 32 countries and is a fantastic way of finding out about the diverse industrial history across the continent.

Big Pit is a living, breathing reminder of the coal industry in Wales and the people and society it created.