Llay Miners Wheel Memorial To Be Built

A four metre high miners wheel is set to be built in Llay to honour the memory of the village’s miners and its heritage.

A planning application has been put in to build the wheel outside Llay Miners’ welfare.

The village of Llay was built in the early 20th century for a community of mineworkers and their families.

In its prime Llay main colliery was the largest in Wales and one of the deepest throughout the whole of Europe producing over a million tons of coal in 1929 alone.

It had a relatively short productive life of 43 years running from 1923 to 1946 and despite being the last major colliery to be established in North Wales it was also the first to close delivering a bitter blow to the local community.

Those behind the project to build the wheel said that despite being home to such an important colliery there was little evidence to show for it in Llay.

Therefore they are proposing to create a highly visible reminder of the large investment in social and industrial engineering which established the village.

They added that it will also serve as a memorial to the miners who came from the older mining villages of Wrexham who accounted for half of the workers at the colliery.

A bilingual plaque will also be on display to members of the public giving a short history of Llay coal mine and village and explaining the function of the wheel.