The Glamorganshire Canal – and the Rise of Rail

By Laura Bray

We all know the story – a wager between Samuel Homfray  of the Penydarren Ironworks, and Richard Crawshay of Cyfarthfa that Trevithick’s steam locomotive could haul ten tens of iron from Penydarren to Abercynon, and we all know that Homfray won his bet, and Merthyr became known across the world as the home of the first railway.

But have you ever wondered why the bet was made? Perhaps it just a whim between two very rich two men with money to burn. After all the bet was sizeable 500 guineas or something like £40,000 in today’s money.  Perhaps it was because Homfray, who had used Trevithick’s engines to drive a hammer in the ironworks, was a pioneer.  Or was it because of the Glamorganshire Canal…..?

By the late 18th century, Merthyr was probably the most important manufacturing town in Britain, with a population 8 times larger than that of Cardiff, which was the nearest port.  However, the river wharfs in Cardiff were rapidly reaching capacity and could not keep up with the maritime demands made by Merthyr’s four ironworks.  In addition, it was prohibitively expensive to get the goods from Merthyr to Cardiff, costing the ironmasters something like £14,000 p.a. – a sum equivalent to around £1m today.

It was within this context that Richard Crawshay took the lead in lobbying for a Parliamentary Bill in order to get the powers to build a canal from Merthyr to Cardiff, and in 1790 the Glamorganshire Canal Act was passed. The Act provided that a company be formed of The Company of Proprietors of the Glamorganshire Canal Navigation with power to purchase land for making the canal and to carry out the necessary works.  The Act also laid down the route that was to be followed, authorised the raising of £90,000 to meet the cost of completing the canal, and laid down the maximum charges for carrying various classes of goods, up to 5d. per ton per mile for carrying stone, iron, timber, etc. and up to 2d. per ton per mile for carrying iron stone, iron ore, coal, lime-stone, etc. It also stated that the distribution of Company profits was not to exceed £8% per annum upon the capital sum actually laid out in making the canal.

The Canal Company appointed a Committee from amongst its shareholders to be responsible for the management of the Company’s affairs, and the first Committee meeting was held on 19 July 1790 at the Cardiff Arms Inn, when it was decided to enter into a contract with Thomas Dadford senior, Thomas Dadford junior and Thomas Sheasby to construct the canal at a cost of £48,228, exclusive of the cost of land. This is about 3 times the annual cost of sending goods to Cardiff, so it was estimated that all costs would be recouped in as little as three years.

Construction work started in August 1790 and it was a massive undertaking – over its length of 25 miles, the land drops by 543 feet, so it was necessary to build 51 locks, some double, and one in Nantgarw, a triple lock; some locks were 10 feet high and the one in Aberfan topped 14’6″. In addition. there was the necessity for an aqueduct to be built at Abercynon, a tunnel under Queen St in Cardiff, several feeders to be created and, as the canal came closer to Merthyr, it had to be cut through sheer mountain rock.  By 1794, however, there was a functioning and effective new transport link between Merthyr and Cardiff at a final cost of £103,600.

But even before the canal was completed it had become clear that it needed to be extended beyond Cardiff so as to give access directly to the sea.  Another £20,000 was raised by subscription and a deal was struck with the Marquis of Bute, who owned the land, to build a sea lock and canal basin, which enabled ships of 200 tons to dock. The Sea Lock itself was 103 feet long with gates 27 feet wide.

The canal made transport to Cardiff very cheap, but generated very high revenues.  It was designed to take canal boats of up to 25 tons, each drawn by a horse, with a man and a boy.  By 1836 there were about 200 boats on the canal, each doing 3 round trips every fortnight.  That’s a lot of tonnage at an average of 3d a ton.

But all was not well in the Committee.  From the start, it was dominated by Richard Crawshay, who tended to regard the canal as his and his attempts to squeeze the profits of the other ironmasters was bitterly resented. As early as 1794 Richard Hill Of the Plymouth Works complained that the Canal Company was using water from the river that was legally his.  Guest, in Dowlais, was also vocal about how we could access the canal from his works.  A branch canal seemed impractical so a tramroad was proposed  to which the canal company contributed £1000.  This was competed in 1791 – before the canal.  The Crawshays built a second tramroad between the Gurnos Quarry and their works in Cyfarthfa and a third was built in 1799 by the Hills, linking the Morlais Quarry with the Dowlais to Merthyr Tramroad at Penydarren.

But by 1798, tensions in the committee were so great that they blew.  As a consequence, the other ironmasters were dropped for the canal committee, leaving only Crawshay, and it was another 26 years before they rejoined.  But discussions took place between them about how to break the Crawshay stranglehold of the canal, and the answer seemed to be the construction of a tramroad from Merthyr, to meet the canal at Abercynon.  This tramroad, which opened in 1802 and was built without an Act of Parliament, linking the two existing tramroads from Dowlais to Merthyr and from Morlais to Penydarren.  From the point of view of Guest, Homfray and Hill, although the trams using it were horse drawn,  this new tramroad avoided the delays caused by the locks between Merthyr and Abercynon.

This is the background to the bet that was made between Homfray and Crawshay.  Could the new stream locomotive pull a load of iron?  Could it supersede canal power?

We all know that it did, but broke the rails on the way down, so could not come back.  But progress had been made.  The Taff Vale Railway Company opened as far as Abercynon only 40 years later, and to Merthyr a year later and the canal’s decline was inexorable and it had all but ceased by 1900.

Looking back, it is reasonable to ask, if there had been no canal, where would the home of the steam locomotive be?  Not Merthyr, that’s for sure.