Park Wall & Laboratory Chimney
Throughout its lifetime the school was used extensively for night classes. Not surprisingly
mining qualifications were offered as part of these arrangements. To facilitate this
training, an Engineering and Mining laboratory was opened in February 1922, in rooms
which were later converted to Room 10 and the Biology Lab. The chimney stack shown
was probably required for some activity carried out in the laboratories. Some readers
will know that a date of 1914 was carved into the stone arch above the entrance to the
Labs, but we do not know what delayed its opening by eight years. It’s possible
that the outbreak of war was responsible.
Nor are we sure when the Mining Lab closed, but we do know that there was no
Biology Lab until at least 1935; before then the practical work in Zoology and Botany
was carried out in the Chemistry Lab.
After closure some of the old mining apparatus was stored in the Physics darkroom,
and when Mr T.J. Evans arrived back at school as a teacher in 1948, he transferred
some surveying instruments previously used by the mining laboratory to the Geography
Department.
We do not know what type of furnace required a chimney of the size shown above,
but whatever its purpose, it was eventually demolished in 1934, (see the caption to
Plate 158 in Aberdare, Pictures from the Past, Volume 2).