Y Tymbl · Carmarthenshire · est. 1893
Achub y Workies — calon y pentref ers 1893.
The Great Mountain Workingmen's Club opened in 1893, opposite the pit gates, for a booming village with six hundred men underground and one overwhelmed pub. Tumble has kept it ever since — through court stings, hostile breweries, strikes and the loss of the colliery itself. Now it's carrying debts it cannot pay, and unless we act it goes under the hammer — most likely to a developer.
We can save it the way it's always been kept: a little each, from many of us.
So far, the village has pledged
£0 a month, between us — chasing £2,500 a month
— to hit £2,500/month
Milestone 1 — the all-or-nothing gate
£0 raised so far, all in — diolch, Tumble.
Times are tight for everyone — that's why it starts at £2 a month, or a £5 one-off. Less than one pint, and it counts you in.
All or nothing: if we don't hit £2,500/month by 1 September, every penny is refunded.
You choose your amount — from £2 a month · cancel anytime · secure checkout by Stripe
Do your bit
The men of Tumble paid the schoolmaster a penny a week for what schooling they got, a shilling at the club door, pennies across the bar. Small money, paid steadily, is how this village has always built things — and it kept this club standing for 133 years. The modern version is a few pounds a month: cancel anytime, no forms, no catch.
All or nothing — that's the deal. If the village hasn't pledged £2,500 a month by 1 September, every payment is refunded and every pledge is cancelled. That's — on the clock. We only carry on if there's enough behind this to genuinely save the club — your money never sits in a lost cause.
Straight talk on the numbers: the club's running costs are estimates for now. An accountant's independent review of the books — true costs, true profit and loss — is underway, and will set the final scope of the rescue plan. Until then every figure is provisional, and every pledge stays fully refundable.
And membership pays you back: every member gets exclusive perks — free lifetime access to two health apps worth £399+, plus growing offers from local businesses. See what you get ↓
The maths is simple: 500 of us at £5 a month hits the first milestone. A quarter of the village keeps the doors open for good — before a single person from Cross Hands, Llanelli or the diaspora chips in.
Give £250 and your name — or the name of a collier in your family — goes on the Founders' Wall inside the club when it's saved. Live too far to pop in? This is how the diaspora comes home.
Payments are handled by Stripe — the club never sees your card details. Prefer a standing order, cash or cheque? Get in touch and we'll sort it the old-fashioned way.
The roll of honour
Every pledge and donation lands here the moment it happens. Put your name on it at the checkout or on the thank-you note — or stay anonymous and count just the same.
£120,000
of debt the club cannot pay alone
Auction
is where it goes if we do nothing — and developers will be bidding
133 years
of Tumble's life under one roof. Once it's gone, it's gone.
The plan
Everything on this page rolls up into one number: steady monthly pledges. Grants and one-off gifts help enormously, but funders and banks back clubs that can show reliable income. The monthly figure is what proves Tumble means it.
£2,500/month
The go/no-go line: hit it and the rescue is on; miss it and every penny goes back. It doesn't secure the club by itself — but it proves Tumble wants this saved, and it buys the time to finish the job. Hope, funded.
£5,000/month
Our current estimate of what running the club takes — the accountant's review of the books, now underway, will confirm the true figure. This is the line between open and gone, and the village keeps ownership.
£10,000/month
Everything above, plus a proper repayment plan for the £120,000 debt. A solvent, steady club is one grant funders and government schemes will back — and that's what turns the Workies from a drinking club into a modern community hub: café, food, cinema nights, windows in the back room.
Our promise: every month we'll publish what came in, what went out, and what's left of the debt — on this page. No secrets in this club.
Your Workies
Married in the big room? First pint at that bar? Sang on the stage, or watched your grandfather play snooker under those lights? Send it in — with photos if you've got them — and we'll build the village's memory wall right here.
The request board
Honest answers only — this is how the committee decides what the money gets spent on. What would you love to happen at the Workies? What would actually make you turn up on a Tuesday?
Worth saving for
Saving it is step one. The plan is to take the Workies beyond a drinking club and turn it back into what the colliers meant it to be — the place the whole village uses.
Still a pint with your butties. And everything else as well.
What's actually here
People hear "club" and picture a bar. Come and look. There's a main hall with a proper stage. A big back room. A full kitchen. Snooker, pool and darts. The bar, yes — and the rugby club and the football club calling it home. There isn't another room like it for miles, and no developer is ever going to build the village a new one.
What this place is
When work began on the Great Mountain Colliery in 1887, Tumble was little more than an inn and a few farms. Within a decade the village had doubled in size — new houses street by street, six hundred men underground, and one overwhelmed pub. So in 1893 the colliers got their own club: a hall so grand, at a cost of some £3,000, that old members marvelled anyone had dared build it in a place this size. The proof, as collier Wilf Timbrell put it, was the seam of "black diamonds" under the Graig-y-Lletty. The club went up directly opposite the colliery gates.
The establishment then spent fifteen years trying to strangle it. An Inland Revenue sting in 1896 — two officers taking lodgings in the village, a shilling paid at the door, a drink bought at the bar — put the club's manager in front of the Llanelly Police Court. Licence applications in 1908 and 1909 were fought by rival breweries and refused by the bench, despite a petition signed by the vicar, the curate, the Baptist minister and the colliery officials. The club carried on regardless: nearly three hundred members, healthy books, not a single complaint against it — and when Bethel chapel needed water for baptisms, it was the club that supplied it.
The papers never liked the place, either. Tumble's great strike of 1893 — the very year the club opened — was put down with troops, and the Western Mail never let the village forget it: as late as 1906 it was dismissing a Saturday night here as "another wild orgy of lawlessness". The men it sneered at were colliers who paid the schoolmaster a penny a week for what schooling they got, and who filled this club to the porch on pay nights. Hard men, hard trade, one hall of their own.
Coal paid for all of it, and the village paid dearly for the coal. The Great Mountain had the worst safety record in the Gwendraeth Valley: sixty-one men never came home from it. One was William Owen John of Park View, who survived four years of Gallipoli and the Western Front, went back underground, and was killed on his second day. The teas after those funerals were poured in this club. So were the wedding toasts, the christening cups and every homecoming since.
The pit closed in 1962. The club carried on. For 133 years it has been where Tumble gathers: home of Tumble RFC — the Magpies, black and white like the bird on this page — whose lounge, Lolfa'r Llewod, is named for the three British & Irish Lions this one village has produced. The football club. Prize snooker, in the village that raised a twice world amateur champion. The Christmas do, the christening after the chapel and the tea after the funeral. Ask anyone in Tumble — they've got a memory in that room.
133 years of fighting — the bench, the breweries, the strikes, the dust, the pit closing — and the Workies outlived the lot. It would be a strange thing to let a bank statement finish what none of that could.
The Workies isn't a company. Nobody holds shares in it and nobody takes a profit out of it. It's run by a volunteer committee and it belongs, in every way that matters, to the village. Which means it is ours to lose — and ours to save.
First pints and last goodbyes —
the Workies has held them all.
Historical detail drawn, with thanks, from Jeff Alexander's history of Tumble. The club's founders were photographed on its steps in the 1890s — send us your family's Workies photos below and we'll build the wall their story deserves.
Press & media
Nobody has written this story yet — no outlet has covered the Workies' fight, so first interviews are there for whoever calls first. We can arrange committee members, members of fifty years' standing, the rugby and football clubs, and families of the colliers who built the hall. Photography inside the club is welcome by arrangement.
Straight answers
The club — a member-owned organisation run by a volunteer committee. Nobody draws a profit. We publish the figures on this page every month: what came in, what went out, and what's left of the debt.
Simple: it's all or nothing. If the village hasn't pledged £2,500 a month by 1 September, we refund every payment and cancel every pledge — nobody's money sits in a lost cause. And if the club ever closes despite hitting the target, we stop every pledge immediately. That's the promise.
Anytime, in a couple of clicks, no questions asked. The link is in every payment email from Stripe, or just get in touch and we'll do it for you.
Payments run through Stripe, the same system used by millions of businesses. The club never sees or stores your card details.
Not yet — the Workies is a members' club, which is why it could get into this mess quietly. As part of the rescue we're taking advice on the right long-term structure (including a charitable arm), which could add Gift Aid to donations later. We'll update this page when that changes.
Honestly, yes. Share this page in every group chat you're in. Send a memory and photos. Come to events. And if you've got a trade or a skill — accounts, building, marketing, cooking — tell us. The rebuild will run on exactly that.
Talk to us. We're putting together sponsorship for local firms — your name on the wall, the events, the shirts — and we'd be glad to discuss larger gifts or paying off a chunk of the debt directly.
New — member perks
Anyone pledging monthly is a member — and members get something back. Every member gets free lifetime membership of ParrotPal and Turtle Method, together worth £399+: workouts, help tracking your nutrition for weight loss, and real community support. Local businesses are adding their own offers, and this wall grows as the valley gets behind it — so you save the club and come out ahead.
Run a local business? Offer members any perk — your choice, change it any time — and get your logo on this wall, shout-outs on our channels and a place in the press story. Email the campaign and you're in.