The Big Pit National Mining Museum is located on the edge of the town of Blaenafon which played a vital role in the industrial revolution and has been awarded World Heritage Status. The Big Pit Museum is at the site of what was one of Britain’s biggest coal mines until it closed in 1980. In 1983 it reopened as a museum where visitors can now tour the colliery buildings and venture 91m (300ft) underground with a former miner to see what life would have been like for those that worked in the mines.