Welsh Journals

northern terminus of Scott's Railway. Its engine house still forms an out- standing feature which is clearly seen on the northern side of the M4 Morriston by-pass. Captain John Scott, from whom the pit derives its better-known name, took a lease of the colliery in 1816 from C. H. Smith of Gwernllwynchwyth, and with his two partners traded as the Old Church Colliery Company. The early history of the pit is obscure. It has been stated5 that it was sunk in about 1770 by Scott, but shortly afterwards abandoned because the workings were too wet. Scott is then supposed to have made a further attempt to extract the coal by building the engine- house and installing a Cornish pumping engine. However this so depleted his finances that in 1819 he was obliged to sell the pit to his friend, C. H. Smith. A serious difficulty with this account is the remarkably long spell of activity that must be attributed to Scott. To surmount this it has been suggested that there were two of them, father and son. A more likely sequence of events, however, which removes this difficulty, and has far bet- ter documentary support, is as follows:6 Chauncey Townsend of London was granted two leases of pits in the Llansamlet area in 1750, one from Lord Mansel, the other from Mary Morgan of Gwernllwynchwyth which included the Church Pit. These pits were vigorously exploited by him and then by his son-in-law, John Smith, who, among other achievements, was the builder of Smith's Canal. After the latter's death in 1797 the coal- mining enterprise passed to his son Charles Smith, who in turn died in 1813 leaving a son, Charles Henry, who was only nine years old. During his minority the Gwernllwynchwyth estate and the pits were held in trust for him by his Uncle Henry. It was during Henry Smith's trusteeship that Captain Scott first came on the scene. A London capitalist, he obtained a lease of the coal under Gwernllwynchwyth in 1816, and in the same year built a railway, Scott's Railway, from the Old Church Colliery (alias Scott's Pit) to Foxhole to improve arrangements for transporting the coal down to the river for shipping. The course of this railway is clearly shown on the first edition of the 1 Ordnance Survey map of 1830 (sheet 37). It is probably to this period, too, that the construction of the engine-house should be ascribed. However, after all this expense, including, it must be presumed, the purchase of a locomotive in 1819, Scott and his partners never seem to have been able to make a profit from the concern. In 1821 and in 1826 the workers and the rating authorities respectively had to appeal to the courts for the settlement of outstanding accounts; and in 1828, by which time the colliery was mortgaged to the Swansea banking house of Walters, Voss & falters for £ 11,200, the lease reverted to C. H. Smith. The railway also became his property and remained so until it was incorporated into the Swansea Vale Railway in 1845. Ezekiel Thomas's informants therefore seem to be fully vindicated. There was a locomotive on Scott's Railway at the time they claimed, and its driver was very likely the Mr. Maddison who came from Newcastle. As engineer at the Old Church Colliery it would have been natural for him to drive the engine on Scott's Railway, since both colliery and railway were in the possession of the same partnership and formed interdependent parts of the same enterprise.