The final struggle—1880. attended before the end of the year by forty children.
A good driving-road had been made from the shaft to the nearest public road, near the ‘Black Rock Hotel,’ and encouragement had been given to the various tradesmen in Chepstow and Caldicot; and from this time to the completion of the works the men were as well supplied with all the necessaries of life as if they had lived in an old town; tradesmen and farmers’ carts of all descriptions calling at all the houses nearly every day.
Other land for houses had been leased, and also land for a second road leading in the direction of the villages of Portskewett and Caldicot, Arrangements had been made with the Great Western Railway Company to allow a timber bridge for this road to be thrown over their South Wales line; and the erection of the bridge was in progress.
The heading between the door, which had been shut by Lambert, and the bottom of the shaft being rendered useless as a drainage heading by the lowering of the gradient under the river, it had been intended that after the works were completed it should be filled up with rough masonry or concrete; but on a careful examination of the heading itself, it was found that in some places it was in a very dangerous condition. For part of its length the heading was driven in the Pennant sandstone; but it also passed through beds of coal-shale, and being very lightly timbered, was in a very bad state, and for four years