Tag: Cyfarthfa Ironworks

Memories of Old Merthyr

We continue our serialisation of the memories of Merthyr in the 1830’s by an un-named correspondent to the Merthyr Express, courtesy of Michael Donovan.

Quarry Row is an offshoot from the road to Jackson’s Bridge. It extended from about Bryant’s Old Brewery premises, almost and occasionally abutting the River Taff. Then came Caepantywyll, and a path by the river led on to the Cyfarthfa Works.

An extract from the 1875 Ordnance Survey map showing the area mentioned in this article.

Only a few yards from Bryant’s Brewery there was a passage between the houses for some short distance which thence was an open path up to the Grawen Road. The name of the resident has slipped my memory, but not many houses intervened before an observatory could be seen projecting above the roof, but it was not there as early as the place can be remembered by me. The owner was evidently an astronomer by inclination, though a grocer by trade. Persons by the name of Cornelius had a brewery not far off. The only person that can be called to mind was the Rev W Morris, who was the minister of the chapel in Caepantywyll.

A row of houses with the wall of the Cyfarthfa Works existed close by, and turning up by this wall (leaving the Cyfarthfa Works on the left) we should come out on the Brecon Road. Immediately opposite was a road leading to Gwaelodygarth, the Cyfarthfa Castle Park wall being on the left. We will, however, turn to the right, and return by the Grawen Road. There was a public house on the right, having its back to and overlooking Caepantywyll, kept by a very big man who had travelled as a giant, and there was also a small one who accompanied him as a dwarf.

The Grawen turnpike was nearer to Merthyr, and about there some years kept by Mr Scott was a grocer’s shop. That, during the absence of all the family at divine service, was broken into on a Sunday evening, and although a pretty extensive rummage had been made, the money bag was not discovered. It had been put where thieves would not be very likely to search – in and under the waste paper place of the counter. The time had been selected by those who were well acquainted with the circumstances for it was on a Sunday night following the Saturday’s ‘big draw’.

During the Chartist agitation, a William Gould, who was known as a prominent member, lived in Grawen Road (he too kept a grocer’s shop), and down towards the road was the home of the Evanses of Zoar, who were followed in the same house by the Owens of the same chapel. The brewery on the right, after passing a pond on the right at a lower level than the one on the left, was called Hopkin’s Brewery (it was this that Mr E L Richards was a partner in). Old Mr Hopkins was very fond of riding (he had a splendid jumper I remember).

In a field adjoining, and which was behind the row of houses then called Burnett’s Row on one side and the road to Pontstorehouse on the other, there was a very large block of limestone, which Mr Richards had moved there, and which he said was the fossil of a turtle. It was larger than those at the Zoological Gardens in London. At the end of Burnett’s Row we are at the house the Rev Mr Jones lived in, and we are back where we have already been.

To be continued at a later date…..

A Cyfarthfa Ghost Story

The following article is provided courtesy of ‘The Spooky Isles’ website.

140 years ago today in the August 17th 1881 edition of the Western Mail, the paper’s anonymous but “esteemed correspondent” sent in an “extraordinary narrative” which he “vouched for on the most unimpeachable authority.”

The story concerns the dormant ironworks at Cyfarthfa, Merthyr Tydfil and although the Mail declared its scepticism it published anyway because “the story is a good one.” And it is, very nicely told.

The Ironworks – A Little History

First opened in 1765 by a London merchant, by the 1790s the Cyfarthfa ironworks, under the direction of Richard Crawshay, became one of Britain’s most important iron producers – always handy for a nation almost perpetually at war somewhere in the world and in the midst of the industrial revolution.

The Crawshay family remained in charge, overseeing the works’ slow decline in the face of heavy foreign competition and rising costs. Still a hugely important local employer, profits from the ironworks were used to build William Crawshay II a grand home (Cyfarthfa Castle).

In 1875, the works closed, were re-opened and rebuilt to become a steelworks – a restructure that wasn’t completed until 1884, some time after the Western Mail’s story was published.

Cyfarthfa Works. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

The Ghosts of Cyfarthfa Iron Works

The tale’s unnamed narrator begins by mysteriously half-explaining that he and a friend visited the works although why “must remain unexplained” and it was “towards the gloomiest part of the night that we sallied forth, and made our way over tramroads and intricate paths to the scene.”

From here, it’s worth simply quoting the rest of the correspondent’s description in full, reading as it does, like a classic Victorian ghost story a novelist might have conjured up.

“Cyfarthfa Works had been familiar to me for many years, but they were associated with the fullest activity, with the glare of furnaces, the whirl of the rolls; and that picture was vividly in my imagination when we stood at length before the works that were slumbering in thick darkness, and as silent as the grave.

No change could have been greater, no stillness more profound. We were far enough from the town to lose its glare and its noise, and out of the way of the people journeying from one place to another. No place could thus be more isolated, even as no contrast from the wild dash of work to the utter quietude could be more intense.

We stood a while just within the dense shadow of one of the mills, just tracing the ponderous wheels and the dimly outlined rolls when suddenly the two huge wheels creaked and began to revolve, the rolls to move, and in a moment there was all the whirl of industry again, only needing the glare of light and forms of men to assure us that the works were in full action.

My companion, with an exclamation of profound astonishment, clasped me by the arm. Cool, iron man as he is, strong-minded and proof against the superstitions of the age, I felt his voice tremble as he said, ‘This is most strange. There are no men here; the works are stopped; no steam, no motive power.’

And the grip on my arm became severe.

I, too, felt alarmed, and am not ashamed to confess it. My imagination, livelier than that of his, conjured up misty shades, and I saw shapes flitting to and fro, and heard the cry of men and boys amidst the clanging iron. Involuntarily we stepped back into the air, and as suddenly as the medley arose, so it died away; not a wheel moved, all was hushed, and at rest.”

‘Cyfarthfa Ironworks Interior at Night’, by Penry Williams

The Old Man

“We walked away a little distance, our purpose unaccomplished, and talked to each other about this extraordinary incident. My friend, better able than I to afford a clue, was, like myself, utterly at sea, and could give no explanation. ‘But,’ said he, resolutely, ‘it must be fathomed, and we will find it out.’

With those words he hurried back to the works. I followed, and in a few minutes again stood looking into the silent mill. There was the same strange hush, the same weird gloom that appeared palpable did we but attempt to grasp it; but no sound.

‘Was it fancy?’ said my friend with his cheerful laugh. He had scarcely spoken when the great wheel again revolved, and machinery here and there, to the right, to the left, ponderous wheels and rolls, all sprang into motion, and the din of work was perfect in its fullness.

With this came the clanging of falling iron, the rattle of trams sounded strangely alike and again the impression was strong that puddlers and moulders flitted by, and ghostly labour went on. This was sufficient for us.

We hurriedly left the scene, and on our way home met one of the old ironworkers of Cyfarthfa to whom my friend related the circumstance. He knew the man as an old and respectable inhabitant, and made no secret of what we had heard.

‘Ha,’ said the veteran, stopping and leaning on his stick, ‘I have heard it too’: and, sinking his voice, he continued, ‘it always comes when the works are stopped.

It did one time before, many years ago, and when Mr Richard [Crawshay, died 1810] was living it came again. No one can say what is the reason, and perhaps it is best not to make any stir about it.’”

To read the original article, and also some other ghostly stories about Merthyr, please visit:

https://www.spookyisles.com/welsh-ghosts-western-mail/#A_Cyfarthfa_Ghost_Story_%E2%80%93_August_17th_1881

The Castle Inn (Tavern Twll), Caepantywyll – part 2

by Barrie Jones

Born in Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, it is not surprising that his memorial stone is inscribed in Welsh. On the stone is a verse in keeping with many Welsh headstones and is a Welsh type known as englyn. The verse describes John as a fond husband, a loving father, both willing and generous and that there has never been a man on earth with his healthy vigour, nor more genial.

At the time of taking on the licence, John Lewis may already have ‘retired’ from puddling, the Cyfarthfa Works was closed from 1874 until 1879 and this interval may have marked his ‘retirement’. More so because after such a long layoff the exacting work that puddling entailed would prevent a return to work for a man of his age.  Charles Russell James recalled:

“puddlers in front of the huge furnaces plying their long puddling bars before fires that would roast an ox. To protect their bodies they wore long leathern aprons. The work was most exhausting. They did not live to be old men. They got shrivelled up at a comparatively early age, and often took to drinking beer heavily. No wonder poor fellows, for their thirst must have been a consuming one. They got heavy wages, but no wage can compensate for that class of killing work”.

Puddling was dangerous work, for example, Gabriel, one of John’s sons was forced to seek temporary parish relief for himself, his wife and four children in 1897 because of burns suffered at work.

Through his work, John would have been well acquainted with the beer trade, and the reopening of the Cyfarthfa Works in 1879 would have been a welcome boost to those inns near the works. John’s entrance into the beer trade and, the expansion of the inn, may have been prompted by the Work’s reopening. The iron masters appreciated from an early stage that their workers could not stand the hot, dusty and fume filled atmosphere of the works without regular intake of water. Beer offered the safest alternative to water and the works purchased beer from the nearby pubs on a contract basis for special exertions. When ‘encouragement’ was needed for special exertions beer notes were written by departmental managers, so that the beer could be brought into the works for the men or could be collected by them when they went home. In addition, public houses formed a useful gathering point for workers at the end of their shifts and especially those inns where gang masters paid their gangs their weekly wages.

John had a relatively short-lived career as a publican, no more than a decade. It would seem that the driving force at the Castle Inn was his son Samuel. Joan, John’s widow, moved out of the inn and Samuel became the full time landlord. During this early period Samuel’s sister Catherine and her husband Alfred Parry assisted him. Alfred was no stranger to the licensing trade; his late father Lewis Benjamin Parry was formally landlord of the Black Lion, Picton Street.

Samuel married Diana Smith in 1902 and continued to manage the inn for the next twenty years.

Samuel gave up the licensing trade in March 1915, with the transfer of the Inn’s licence to George Rees.  Samuel had then moved to number 20 Gate Street. At the time of his death in March 1933, he was living at number 12 Dixon Street and working at the Dowlais Works.  Samuel had inherited his father’s geniality; during his time as a landlord he had established himself within the community and must have been an active and well-liked personality, as testified by his obituary in the Merthyr Express:

“It is with deep regret we have to record the death of Mr. S. Lewis late of the Castle Inn, Caepantywyll, at the age of 57. Working at Dowlais Works, he collapsed at his work last Thursday leaving his home at 12 Dixon Street in his usual good spirits.  It came as a great shock to his sons, daughters, relatives and friends. A great sportsman in past years and well known throughout Merthyr, the deceased was a widower of the late Mrs. Diana Lewis”.

It seems fitting that Samuel had returned to the industry that had helped prosper his father and his older brothers for so many decades and to what was then the last iron and steel works in Merthyr Tydfil.

It’s uncertain when the ‘old’ inn was demolished and the larger ‘new’ inn built in its place. The rebuild may have taken place just after Samuel’s retirement in 1915.  George Rees was the licencee throughout and after the First World War, and by the onset of the Second World War the licencee was Arthur Charles Sussex.

The Castle Inn in 2020

Notes on the Merthyr Tydfil Tramroads – part 2

by Gwilym and John Griffiths

Cwm Cannaid Tramroad: We do not know when this tramroad was constructed. We would guess it was sometime around 1800-1814. Despite its name, the tramroad was built before the shaft of Cwm Cannaid Colliery was sunk. The track was shown clearly on the 1814 Ordnance Survey Map and on Robert Dawson’s 1832 Boundary Commission Map whereas the shafts of Cwm Cannaid Colliery were apparently sunk about 1845. The purpose of the tramroad was to relieve the inefficient old tub canal, or coal canal, sometimes called the Cyfarthfa Coal Canal, of the 1770s. The latter transported coal (and perhaps ironstone?) in two-ton tubs from levels (some suggested via dangerous leats) in Cwm Cannaid to Cyfarthfa Works: some say horse-drawn, others say hauled or pushed by men and women. The Cyfarthfa Coal Canal was closed around 1835, which gives an explanation of Cwm Cannaid Tramroad on Robert Dawson’s 1832 Boundary Commission Map.

The tramroad followed roughly the route of the old coal canal: the latter a twisting route, the former almost a straight line. It skirted Glyn Dyrys Ironstone Mine, a coal shaft below Lower Colliers Row, in front of Lower Colliers Row itself, Tir Wern Uchaf (where it crossed the canal twice), a link to Cwm y Glo Colliery and Ironstone Mine, Upper Colliers Row, Tir Heol Gerrig and hence to the coke ovens and yards above (to the west) of Cyfarthfa Works.

Lower Colliers Row. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

When Cwm Cannaid Pit was sunk in 1845, that became the terminus of the system. The 1901 Ordnance Survey Map named it ‘Cwm Pit Railway’, and the line linking it to ‘Gethin Railway’ was labelled ‘railway in course of construction’. We saw the remnants of these mines, canal and tramroad in the 1940s and 1950s, and often walked the old canal embankment, by then well wooded.

A section of the 1901 Ordnance Survey Map showing the tramroad marked as ‘Cwm Pit Railway’. Lower Colliers Row and the old Cyfarthfa Canal are also shown.

Again, industrial despoliation was reverting to nature: delicious wild strawberries on the old waste tipping, a nightingale singing by the disused and reed-covered canal reservoir, woodcock and common snipe, pied flycatchers and wood warblers, and numerous other birds; with wild orchids amongst the damp marshy vegetation with dragon-flies, damsel-flies, glow-worms and water-boatmen. We doubt if this still exists in the coniferous plantations which replaced them all in more recent years.

Dowlais Tramroad: This was constructed about 1792-93 to connect Dowlais Works with Pont y Storehouse near the Glamorgan Canal terminus, roughly near present-day Jackson’s Bridge. It gave Dowlais Works access to the then ‘recently’ constructed Glamorgan Canal. The route may well have followed initially the Morlais Quarry Tramroad from Dowlais via Gelli Faelog, keeping to the Gelli Faelog side of Nant Morlais. The 1793 extension from this tramroad is today represented by the main road and high pavement from Trevithick Street down to Pont Morlais and thence via the tunnel, formerly a bridge, into Bethesda Street to Jackson’s Bridge. Did the Glamorgan Canal Company pay the £1,100 for the construction of the tramroad (and Jackson’s Bridge) in lieu of the proposed linking canal from Merthyr Tudful to Dowlais?

Bethesda Street in the 1950s. The car is parked on what was the where tramway exited the tunnel mentioned above and continued to the Glamorganshire Canal at Pontstorehouse. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Gethin Tramroad: This tramroad or railway linked Gethin Colliery (sunk between 1845 and 1849 and opened 1849) initially, and Castle Colliery later (1860s?), with Cyfarthfa Works, taking a route in between those of Cwm Cannaid Tramroad and Ynys Fach Tramroad. No tramroad was shown on the 1850 Tithe Map and Schedule. By 1886 the track left Castle Colliery, skirted the hillside west of the Glamorgan Canal between Furnace Row and Tir Pen Rhiw’r Onnen, through Gethin Colliery (with a link to pit-shaft No2), past Graig Cottage and a bridge over Nant Cannaid. At (the 1853) Cyfarthfa Crossing it curved northwestwards past Tir Wern Isaf and Tir Llwyn Celyn, looping under the 1868 Brecon and Merthyr Railway near Heol Gerrig, and thence to the coke yards.

Gethin Colliery. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive.

By 1886 the route was upgraded to the GWR and Rhymney Railway as far as the Cyfarthfa Crossing. The 1876 six-inch Ordnance Survey Map showed the terminus for the ‘cwbs’ at the rear of Cyfarthfa Works. The 1901 Ordnance Survey Map called it ‘Gethin Railway’. Our grandfather used the railway to get to work at Castle Colliery, and we regularly used this route (then upgraded to a full railway) in the 1940s and 1950s on our daily journeys to and from school at Quakers Yard. One of us was on the last train to use this line before the viaduct between Quakers yard and Pont y Gwaith was found to be unsafe.

Gyrnos Quarry Tramroad: This was used to bring limestone from Gyrnos Quarry (Graig y Gyrnos) alongside Tâf Fechan, past the limekilns and coal yards, over Afon Tâf by Pont Cafnau to Cyfarthfa Works. We have no details of dates, but walked the route many times in the 1950s in search of dippers, kingfishers, grey wagtails and the rest. It was the first tramroad recorded in the 1805 list of John Jones and William Llywelyn: 1 mile 106 yards to Cyfarthfa Furnaces and just over 1¾ miles to the new Ynys Fach Furnaces. In view of the size of the quarry, it must have transported many tons of material.

Pont-y-Cafnau in March 2017

Notes on the Merthyr Tydfil Tramroads – part 1

by Gwilym and John Griffiths

 TRAMROAD: According to the Oxford Concise English Dictionary, ‘tramroad’ is now an historical word: a road with wooden, stone or metal wheel-tracks; a ‘tramway’. Strictly speaking, ‘tramroad’ should be written ‘tram-road’ with a hyphen, but the spelling variation ‘tramroad’ has been used commonly in this district.  There were many tramroads constructed in this valley in so-called ‘historical’ times, though we can still recall many of them very well indeed and had much fun in our youth having rides on the trams.

Blaen Cannaid Tramroad: This tramroad linked several of the ironstone and coal levels, as well as later mines and collieries, in the hamlet of Gelli Deg to Cyfarthfa Works. The tramroad started at some ironstone levels about 900-1,000 feet above sea-level near Blaen Cannaid, not far from the site of the sixteenth century iron bloomery or small furnace. The route of the tramroad went between Pen y Cae and Pen y Coedcae, crossing the (unnamed?) stream which fed the small reservoir near Lower Colliers Row; and thence over Nant Cwm y Glo to Cwm y Glo Colliery and Ironstone Mine.

Cwm y Glo Colliery. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Thereafter it continued northwards to Coedcae Ironstone Mine, over Nant Cwm Pant Bach, across the road Heol Gerrig, linking with Cwm Cannaid Tramroad at the coke yards behind the furnaces at Cyfarthfa Works. We often walked the area in the 1940s and 1950s but recall nothing of note: merely grassed-over waste tipping, etc. What a pity?

Clyn Mil Tramroad: This tramroad went from Plymouth Works up the steep Clyn Mil Incline to the east, past Prospect House (where some distant cousins of ours, the Coles, lived in the 1940s) and Tir Clyn Mil Uchaf and its lime kiln (where our great-great grandparents, David and Mary Morgan, lived and died), and then turning south towards Clyn Mil Colliery and Ironstone Mine.

Prospect House. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

One link from the tramroad deviated further up the mountainside via Coedcae and the Clyn Mil Inclined Plane to several ‘unnamed’ ironstone levels and southwards to waste tipping on Gwern Las land. Another link went to ‘Waun’ Coal Level on Gwern Las property. Another link went to a clay pit on the south side of Clyn Mil Pond and another tramroad linked northwards to ‘New’ Pit (one shaft for coal and another for ironstone) close to Tir Cwm ‘Blacks’ and then on to the brickworks at Tre Beddau.

A very extensive network of lesser roads, some only temporary, covered the higher part of Tir Clyn Mil and Tir Wern Las and these were used either for transporting ironstone or waste tipping. We have no idea as to dates or any other details, but walked all of these routes on numerous occasions, long after the tramroad lines had been removed, in the 1940s and 1950s. It was a barren area then, with industry all gone, but the despoliation was gradually returning to nature again. Here were the homes of redstarts, wood warblers, even wood larks, with skylarks, meadow pipits and cuckoos towards the higher moorland portions. There is surprisingly little information in print about the Plymouth Works as far as we can trace.

To be continued….

Bare Knuckles, White Ladies and Martyred Rebels: The Mythic Townscape of Merthyr Tydfil

by Gareth E Rees

The article below is copied, courtesy of Gareth E Rees from his website Unofficial Britain. To view the original article, please follow this link: http://www.unofficialbritain.com/bare-knuckles-white-ladies-and-martyred-rebels-the-mythic-townscape-of-merthyr-tydfil/

In the year leading up the (Not So) Great Pandemic, I was fortunate enough to take a trip around Wales, researching my book, Unofficial Britain on a sunny weekend in spring.

It was just me, my car and a smartphone. Plus some underpants. Clean ones, at that. No expense spared. Those were the days when you could buy pants on a whim, simply by walking into a clothes shop.

One of my aims of my trip was to explore the Brymbo steelworks near Wrexham, where my grandfather worked until his death in 1976, and where my uncle worked until the factory closed in 1990.

As I was to discover, the ruins of the Brymbo works are haunted by a bottom-pinching phantom steelworker and two black dogs, which I saw with my very own eyes, but that is a story you can read in the book when it comes out.

While I was in North Wales, I was accompanied to the secret mustard gas factory nestled in the Rhydymwyn Valley by Bobby Seal, who wrote about it for Unofficial Britain in 2015: The Valley Works: Mendelssohn, Mustard Gas and Memory.

On the second day of my mini-tour I drove to South Wales, stopping at Port Talbot to look at its still-functioning steelworks, where a monk is said to haunt the grounds of Tata Steel (more of that in my forthcoming book, too).

As I approached Cardiff, I decided on a detour to Merthyr Tydfil, once the great industrial centre of the British Empire, dominated by four ironworks: Plymouth, Penydarren, Dowlais and Cyfarthfa. By the 1830s, the latter two had become the largest in the world.

As iron made way for steel in the latter half of the 19th century, the Ynysfach Ironwork closed. Its Coke ovens became a hub for the homeless, destitute and society’s outsiders. At the time is was considered a den of boozing, thievery and prostitution, but it may well have great place to hang out and – from the perspective of today – at least they could all be closer than 2 metres apart.

It was here where local bare knuckle fighter Redmond Coleman became locked in an epic battle with his rival, Tommy Lyons. The fight is said to have lasted over three hours, leaving both men flat out on the ground at the end, panting with exhaustion. It would have made the infamously long fist-fight scene in John Carpenter’s They Live seem like a minor playground scuffle. Redmond Coleman was so attached to the place that he later claimed his spirit would never leave Merthyr and instead would remain to haunt the Coke Ovens.

This form of afterlife was to be the fate of Mary Ann Rees. Alas, she had no choice in her decision to haunt Merthyr Tydfil. In 1908 she was murdered by her boyfriend, William Foy, whom she had followed into Merthyr on her final evening alive, suspecting him of sleeping with someone else. Her broken body was found in a disused furnace. Rees is considered to be the White Lady who today haunts the old engine house: a sad lady in a long, flowing dress.

The decline of the coal, iron and steel industries devastated Merthyr but it remained a hub for manufacturing. In the 20th century the Hoover factory employed over 4,000 people, with its own sports teams, social clubs, fire brigade and library.

In 1985, Sir Clive Sinclair’s infamous C5 battery operated vehicle went into production at the factory. A local urban myth was that the motors for the CV were, in fact, repurposed Hoover washing motors. They created only 17,000 units before operation was shut down six months later.

The factory closed in 2009 and remains a quiet hulk by the Taff at the edge of the town. Across the road is a derelict car park, its tarmac crumbling, with moss and grass creeping across the last faded parking bay lines.

A majestic pylon inside the perimeter of the abandoned car park slings electricity over the factory to the other side of the valley, where its brethren have amassed on the hills in great numbers. Whatever has happened in the past century, power still pulses through the town, coursing through the veins of Wales.

The fall of the Hoover factory was another blow to the economically stricken town, which might have lost its role in the world, but keeps its story alive in public artworks that I saw on my journey.

The past is never far away when you walk through Merthyr, a townscape saturated in industrial lore.

… Near St. Tydfil’s Church is an ornate drinking fountain on a raised plinth. It commemorates the pioneers of the South Wales steam coal trade. Its canopy is adorned with steel motifs of coal wheels, steamboats and a miner with a pickaxe.

…On a modern brick wall in the town centre, beneath a ‘To Let’ sign, is an abstract frieze of the industrial landscape.

….A pub that has opened in the restored water board building is named The Iron Dragon, with two resplendent golden dragons sculptures jutting from either side of the stone columns that frame the door.

…The Caedraw Roundabout outside the Aldi contains a sculpture by Charles Sansbury, which transforms an earth-bound pit winding gear into a 12 metre tall spire, surrounded by a crescent of standing stones, positing some link in the imagination between the Neolithic and the industrial revolution.

…Pink granite benches are engraved with poems about the industrial past. “the stalks of chimneys bloomed continuous smoke and flame”, says one by Mike Jenkins. Another quotes the scientist Michael Faraday:

“The fires from the hills shone very bright into my room and the blast of the furnace kept up a continual roar.”

On another bench I read lines from ‘Merthyr’ a poem by local lad, Glyn Jones:

“…I find what rustles/ Oftenest and scentiest / through the torpid trees / Of my brain-pan, is some Merthyr-mothered breeze”.

In that same poem, Jones describes the post-industrial town’s decayed slum areas mid-century as “battered wreckage in some ghastly myth”.

On this bench pictured below, was a reference to Dic Penderyn and the 1831 Merthyr uprising.

At that time, the town was home to some of the most skilled ironworkers in the world. But unrest was growing….

Locals were increasingly angry about their inadequate wages, while they were lauded over by the industrialists of the town. It was time for change, but they were hopelessly disenfranchised with only 4% of men having the right to vote.

In May 1831, workers marched through the streets, demanding Parliamentary reform, growing rowdier as their ranks swelled. They raided the local debtors’ court, reclaiming confiscated property and destroying the debtors’ records. Growing nervous about the rebellion, which was beginning to spread to other villages and towns, the industrial bosses and landowners called in the army.

On June 3rd, soldiers confronted protestors outside the Castle Inn and violence broke out. After the scuffle, Private Donald Black lay wounded, stabbed in the back with a bayonet by an unseen assailant.

Despite there being no evidence that young Richard Lewis committed the act, he was accused of the crime and sentenced to death by hanging, disregarding the petition of the sceptical townsfolk, and even doubting articles in the local newspaper. The government wanted the death of a rebel as an example to others, and poor Dic Penderyn was to be it, regardless of trifling matters like proof.

He is now an important cult figure in the working class struggle, buried in his hometown of Port Talbot, but remaining here in spirit, one small burning flame of Merthyr’s fiery legacy.

To buy a copy of Gareth’s book, please follow the link on his site.

Merthyr’s Ironmasters: William Crawshay II

William Crawshay II. Photo courtesy of Cyfarthfa Museum and Art Gallery

William Crawshay II was the third generation of the Crawshay dynasty of Cyfarthfa Ironworks. Born on 27 March 1788, he was the second son of William Crawshay I, only son of Richard Crawshay, who took over ownership of the works from Anthony Bacon.

When Richard Crawshay died in 1810, owing to arguments between him and his son, William (senior), the latter only acquired a three-eighths share of the Cyfarthfa Ironworks, despite being the only son and heir. Over the next decade, William Crawshay senior set about acquiring the remaining shares in the Works to make himself undisputed master of Cyfarthfa. He, preferred however to live away from Merthyr, overseeing the Crawshays’ London base at the wharves in George’s Yard, Upper Thames Street, so he appointed his son William (II) to manage the operation at Cyfarthfa.

When William Crawshay II assumed business responsibilities, Welsh iron was in its heyday and Cyfarthfa prospered under his charge: in 1810 the four blast furnaces producing approximately 11,000 tons of pig iron annually.

These early years were marked by a perennial battle with his father over the extent of his authority at the works. The elder Crawshay was determined to keep Cyfarthfa subordinate to the family’s merchant house at George Yard. This his son could not endure; he was intent on selling Cyfarthfa iron as he saw fit, without reference to his father and brothers in London. Yet despite the repeated tendering (and hasty withdrawals) of his resignation young William was unable to overcome his father. ‘My Dear Will, don’t play the fool,’ his father told him after one threatened resignation in 1820, ‘You are now Vice-Roy of Cyfarthfa and will be Sovereign early enough if you will be content to allow his present Majesty some shadow of Royalty’.

By 1823 the Cyfarthfa Ironworks was the largest in Britain, producing 24,200 tons of pig iron from eight blast furnaces, and William, who was at this time living at Gwaelodygarth House, decided that it was time to erect a new home befitting his status as Merthyr’s ‘Iron King’. He employed architect and engineer Robert Lugar, the same engineer who built many bridges and viaducts for the local railways, to design a huge neo-gothic ‘mock’ castle, complete with towers and turrets, standing in 158 acres of landscaped parkland, overlooking the Ironworks. Cyfarthfa Castle was completed in 1824, at a cost of £30,000.

William Crawshay I died in 1834, and William II became sole proprietor of the Cyfarthfa Works, and also inheriting a share in the London property. By the time Crawshay entered into his inheritance, however, the pre-eminence of Cyfarthfa was slipping. He could not prevent his works being overhauled by neighbouring Dowlais, where the Guests were more sensitively attuned to the crucial market for rails in the 1830s and 1840s. Indeed, the aloofness of the Crawshay dynasty was fast becoming an impediment to continued success: little notice was taken, for example, of the new steelmaking technology of the 1850s. In William Crawshay’s last years it was clear that the great days had passed.

As a young man Crawshay inclined to radicalism in politics. He was also a firm supporter of anti-truck legislation, sensing an opportunity to embarrass the Guests, who operated a truck system (the system of paying wages in goods instead of money) at Dowlais. During the Reform crisis he actively promoted the cause of parliamentary reform – while simultaneously introducing a programme of sudden wage cuts at depression-hit Cyfarthfa. This was a volatile course of action, and one to which contemporaries attributed the insurrectionary riots which swept Merthyr in June 1831, obliging Crawshay to write a hasty defence of his role in local affairs, “The Late Riots at Merthyr Tydfil” (1831).

During the later 1830s he swung abruptly into the Tory camp, although this was a plainly opportunistic manoeuvre to unseat Sir Josiah John Guest, who had been returned for the newly enfranchised borough of Merthyr in 1832 on a radical ticket.

William was married three times, each time to a bride with connections in the iron trade. He married first, in 1808, Elizabeth, the daughter of Francis Homfray (1725–1798) of Stourbridge, a member of the midland iron-making dynasty, and later proprietor of the Penydarren Ironworks. They had three sons, and Elizabeth died in 1813 giving birth to a daughter. Crawshay married second, in 1815, Isabel, the daughter of James Thompson of Grayrigg, Westmorland. Her uncle William Thompson (1793–1854), MP, lord mayor of London in 1828, was a partner in the Penydarren Ironworks, and her uncle Robert Thompson was the proprietor of the Tintern Abbey Ironworks in Monmouthshire. Isabel died in 1827, having given birth to two sons and seven daughters. Crawshay married third, in 1828, Isabella (d. 1885), the sister of Thomas Johnson, a partner in the Bute Ironworks in the Rhymney Valley, and they had a daughter.

William began spending an increasing amount of time at his estate at Caversham in Oxfordshire, which he bought in 1848, having previously leased it for many years, and it was at Caversham that he died on 4 August 1867. In his will, the Cyfarthfa Ironworks were passed on to his elder son from his second marriage – Robert Thompson Crawshay.

Caversham Park