THE Harding brothers have opened up a new coal face at the Cannop Drift Mine, hoping to turn their fortunes round after original seams dwindled to 'almost nothing". 

The twins had paid what Steve Harding calls 'quite a bit of money' for the mine four years ago.  But late last year the mine's two working coal faces dwindled to a mere nine inches wide – too narrow to work.

Faced with ruin, Steve and his twin Richard decided to strike off in a new direction, tunnelling under a nearby hill. 

"The situation wasn't very good.  We are just hoping now that the coal's there for us to take and keep the mine alive.  We knew the seam going northwards towards the River Wye gets thin, but coming back towards Lydney, it should get thicker," says Steve hopefully.

Last week they began to blast out a new road.  This will be lined with rails to carry drams of coal back to the main drift or 'dipple'. 

"You can only do so much with dynamite, the rest is shovel work," Steve adds. 

"It will be a lot of hard work.  There are at least 13-14 tonnes of dirt to move over the next two weeks."

So far the brothers have exposed a 30ft section of their new coal face.  To reach it they have to manoeuvre on knees and elbows.   To be able to swing their mattocks they have to roll onto their sides.   Once the loose coal has been pulled out, they use an electric coal-cutting machine to undercut the next section. 

"The thickness of the seam here is around the 2ft-2ft 6in mark, which is average for the Yorkley seam.  We just hope it continues like that for a further hundred yards."  

The risk is that within a short distance it could once again become too narrow to work. 

"It's a 50-50 chance," Steve reckons.

But they have already made one encouraging discovery.  "The old road cut through an underground watercourse; the roof was always dripping.  This new one seems a lot drier." 

The Yorkley seam makes good house coal, and the two brothers, who live near Coleford, are never short of customers.  Once the new face is fully operational they hope to get 15-20 tonnes a day from the mine. 

"We could easily sell twenty tonnes," says Richard. 

Cannop is one of only six active free mines in the Forest of Dean.  One of the others is Monument in the Bigslade valley near Parkend.  When the coal at Cannop ran out last December the two brothers worked part time at Monument to maintain supplies to their customers.  It was familiar territory for them because they worked there for seven years, prior to starting up on their own. 

Listen to the audio clip below.