Mostyn and Point of Ayr Colliery play role in industry

NO description of the industries of the Dee could, until fairly recently, have ignored the colliery at Point of Ayr.

Here, an aspect of the mining and associated developments is well illustrated that has been virtually forgotten - shipping.

Mostyn 1938. Photo courtesy of the Elvet Pierce collection

Starting production in 1885, by the time of the 2000s, employed about 500 workers in various aspects of the works, producing 200,000 tons of coal per year.

Described as fully mechanised and with its own power station producing enough power to put surplus into the National Grid, coal was shipped to Ireland and the Isle of Man, as well as being supplied to the home market (right up to the end I still remember picking up coal for home use, in the little mini-pickup, virtually from the pithead).

Home market supply made full use of the siding on the main line at Talacre but the supply across the Irish Sea, as both the advertisement and the photograph show, was by ship direct from their own jetty, and using the company’s own ships.

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Point of Ayr advert 1938. Courtesy of the Elvet Pierce collection

Surprisingly, work had been carried out by this time on the feasibility of extracting motor fuel from coal on site, the conclusion being that if this could be tied in with supplying the needs of another local development, the economics were favourable.

Sadly, the new development did not happen, so no further work was done until shortly before the mine closed.

Further down the Dee we arrive at Mostyn, home to a specialist steelworks, and home also of a deep-water docks.

Mostyn Docks 1938. Photo courtesy of the Elvet Pierce collection

As the advertisement shows, the docks, then owned by the steelworks offered itself as a freeport for ocean-going vessels,with safe berthing and adequate facilities. Not only that but with the mine just up the road bunkering facilities for the many coalburning vessels still in use was on offer.

In addition therefore to the emphasis in the report on the vital ferromanganese alloy work at the steelworks, Flintshire was keen to promote the docks for both import and export of local goods.

Point of Ayr Colliery. Photo courtesy of the Elvet Pierce collection

They also drew attention to the recent refurbishment of the facility to cater for ships up to 265 feet long and of 38 feet beam at the 510 foot quay.

The thoroughness of these reports is surprising but the next offering is truly amazing in its depth of research.

This time we look at Mostyn inland from the river, we move downstream a step to Llannerch y Mor.

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There was a proposal made, via a scheme fully researched and described by the Manchester Guardian industrial correspondent, to build a very special

plant there in 1939, on the Dee bank with its own wharf, for producing calcium carbide.

Proposal for Carbide Works. Photo courtesy of the Elvet Pierce collection

So, what is so special about calcium carbide, apart from its use in old fashioned bike and car lamps - well quite simply it was, as in the lamps, the source of acetylene used for welding purposes and therefore vital to the war effort.

Not only that but the then current sources of calcium carbide were Norway, Czechoslovakia and Germany, all threatened if war came. (There is another use for the chemical, producing cyanamid-a fertiliser, but this was not important in the scheme of things.)

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To make the material three things were needed, a supply of pure limestone, anthracite and a source of electrical power, lots of it! In the three countries named, the power came mainly from hydro-electric schemes but in the Flintshire case a new coal fired power station was envisaged, with a new pit being sunk at the site. Anthracite supplies would come from South Wales via the rail system, or by coasters carrying to the factory wharf.

This same wharf would serve to carry the finished product to wherever needed.

Mostyn Area 1938. Photo courtesy of the Elvet Pierce collection

The pure limestone would come, it was proposed, from the Grange quarries on the edge of the Halkyn Mountain beds, this stone being identified as some of the purest in Britain. Some 40,000 tons per year would be needed, and this scheme was touted as the ideal opportunity to open up the limestone trade from the mountain. As it turned out, the Grange caverns were allegedly used to house some of Dr Barnes Wallace’s specialised bombs some five years later.

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The most interesting aspect of the proposal was however the construction of an aerial transport system from Grange quarries across three roads down to the works, as the map shows.

The article goes on to cost the scheme in detail, and makes extremely interesting reading but we now know that the ideas were never carried through, which may have been all to the good as the works would have been a perfect target for bombs. Indeed, as in many things at that time, this scheme may have been a decoy to hide the real site for the manufacture, and was never intended for building.

Flint 1938. Photo courtesy of the Elvet Pierce collection

And so down to Flint, where as the aerial picture shows the factories were far from pie-in-the-sky, but in fact dominated the town, from castle works by the river, via Deeside Mills to Aber Works out in the countryside.

The papers document the development of the plants from their early days in the first years of last century, as well as looking at the historic development of the town itself, and even look at its future prospects.