Rhondda Heritage Park

Summary

A preserved colliery site in the Rhondda Valley — Lewis Merthyr Colliery’s surface buildings converted to a heritage visitor attraction, with pit head gear, miners’ baths, and a complete colliery yard environment.

About this location

Rhondda Heritage Park occupies the surface buildings of Lewis Merthyr Colliery in Trehafod at the mouth of the Rhondda Fach valley. The colliery closed in 1983; the buildings — the winding engine houses, the miners’ baths, the lamp room, the colliery offices, and the headframes — have been preserved as a heritage site and visitor attraction.

The site gives a complete colliery surface environment: the two headframes stand at the pithead; the baths building (where miners would clean up after a shift) has its original cubicle arrangement preserved; the lamp room, the fan house, and the engineer’s workshop are intact. The Rhondda Valley — one of the defining Welsh mining valleys — runs north from the site through Pontypridd.

For productions, the Heritage Park gives a coal mine surface environment without requiring access to an active site. The colliery buildings read as mid-20th century working industrial — the last operational period of the colliery — and can be lit and dressed to various periods from the 1890s to the closure era. Film hire through the site management.