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Coal, Slate and Welsh Food

Historical period

⚠ NOT ROMANTICISED. Industrial Wales built food practice around shift work and hard physical labour: the tommy box and the jack of cold tea carried underground; the caban, the slate quarrymen’s shared meal break with its own elected chairman and rules; company shops and the truck system; one-pot cooking because coal for the range was the one thing a mining family had; and the soup kitchens of the 1926 lockout and the 1984-85 strike, which are food history as much as labour history.

Atlas — where and when

Communities and languages

Languages: Welsh, English

What is recorded

  • The caban, the slate quarrymen’s shared meal break with its own elected officers and procedures, and the miner’s tommy box and cold tea are documented working foodways of industrial Wales. The soup kitchens of the 1926 lockout and the 1984-85 miners’ strike are recorded as food history as well as labour history. documented
  • Coal, iron and slate transform Wales into one of the most densely industrial populations in the world. documented
  • The miners’ lockout, and the soup kitchens that fed the coalfield. documented
  • The miners’ strike and its support kitchens. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Northern English Foodways documented

    The industrial working kitchen of the coalfields is recognisably one tradition across south Wales and the English north.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.