Tag: Penydarren 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.

Taliesin Williams by Joseph Edwards. ©Photo courtesy of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

The Rev J Carroll, the Catholic priest, resided on the Glebeland. He used to write a political letter to the Silurian weekly. Taliesin Williams’ residence was in Castle Street, but the schoolroom entrance for pupils was in Castle Field Lane. He had the most prominent school and the reputation for being somewhat too strict. My recollection of him, however, is quite clear, that he did not punish severely without great provocation. I can acknowledge that he gave me a slap once, and once only, but that it was also fully deserved must also be acknowledged.

As far as can now be recalled not one of his pupils can be named as alive now, except the writer. The late Mr Thomas Jenkins, of Pant, was supposed to be the last – but I am still left. The last of the family of that generation, Miss Elizabeth Williams, died about a year ago in the vicinity of London.

A Mr Shaw also had a school on the other side of the same lane. His son was an artist. John Thomas (Ieuan Ddu) can also be hazily recalled as keeping a school, but more vividly as a bass singer.

Mr John Millar, who, in conjunction with his brother Robert, carried on the brewery at Pontycapel, kept the Wheat Sheaf for many years, and afterwards moved to the Lamb. There was also a weaver, of the name of Wilkins, about the Glebeland, one of whose daughters married Mr W E Jones, the artist. The other daughter married and emigrated. The Merthyr Library and Reading Room started in the house at the corner of Castle Street and Glebeland.

Upon coming up to the Brecon Road from Caepantywyll, if we had gone on to Gwaelodygarth it would have led us past the entrance to the “Cottage” and Penydarren farm yard, past which the road leads to Penybryn and Pant, but keeping around by the Penydarren Park wall we came to the road to Dowlais close to the Penydarren turpike gate.

Mr Richard Forman, when manager of the Penydarren Works, resided at the “Cottage”. Mr William Davies, of the firm of Meyrick and Davies, lived there subsequently, and then Mr John Daniel Thomas, many years the high bailiff of the Merthyr County Court. Mr Grenfell, when the manager of Penydarren, resided at Gwaunfarren. Mr Benjamin Martin followed him (moving from the yard there) when becoming manager. Prior to this I always heard it called the Dairy. Occasionally one of the partners remained a short time at Penydarren House, but the gardener (named Price) used to sell the produce raised there.

Gwaelodygarth Fach a.k.a. “The Cottage”. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

It was at Penydarren Ironworks that the first iron rails were rolled. They were known as the “fish-bellied” pattern. Tredgold, the authority upon the strength of iron, had a piece of iron supplied him with “Penydarren” upon it, by a firm of merchants in London, to whom he applied for a specimen of Welsh iron for experimental purposes. This fact is recorded in his treatise on the strength of iron.

To be continued at a later date…..

Caedraw

by Carolyn Jacob

Following on from the last post here’s a potted history of Caedraw by Carolyn Jacob.

Caedraw means ‘the field beyond’, as it was just outside the traditional village of Merthyr Tydfil and a district beside the River Taff. Although in the eighteenth century it was just a field, as soon as Merthyr started to develop an iron industry this area had houses erected on it for workers and it soon became a built up area. Caedraw first started to have houses from 1800 onwards. Streets here included Taff Street, Upper Taff Street, Picton Street and streets with curious names, such as Isle of Wight and Adam and Eve Court. There was once an old woollen mill in Mill Street. This district was bordered by the River Taff and the Plymouth Feeder.

Caedraw from the 1851 Public Health Map
The same area in 1919

Along the banks of the river as well as a woollen mill there was a tannery, a laundry, a gas works, together with shops and public houses. The Taff was at its most polluted here, having industrial and household waste, together with the black waters of the Morlais Brook, ‘the Stinky’, carrying the filth of Dowlais and Penydarren Ironworks. Thankfully the herons on its banks find the river much cleaner today.

A hundred years ago Caedraw School was multicultural with English, Irish, Italian, Jewish and Welsh pupils. The old Caedraw School was built in 1872 and had some very famous ex pupils, such as the freeman of Merthyr Tydfil and miner’s leader, Arthur Horner. The school was situated by the old gas works.

Caedraw School with St Tydfil’s Church behind. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Because the district was very near to the river Taff, the first laundry in Merthyr Tydfil was set up here but sadly the workers here succumbed to cholera in the 1849 epidemic and this resulted in the Parish publishing a newspaper advertisement to tell people not to boil their water. According to the 1881 census there was a woollen factory between numbers 37 and 42 Picton Street. There were a number of public houses, lodging houses, and a bakehouse in Vaughan Street.

This built up area consisting of lots of small courtyards was very densely populated. The houses themselves were very clean, but small and without any modern conveniences. The old rambling buildings along tightly packed streets of Caedraw became very old fashioned and in need of repair by the 1950s. Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council decided to redevelop Caedraw and build modern flats here to replace the old houses. From 1959 onwards old Caedraw was gradually pulled down but not without a certain feeling of sadness, despite a headline in the Western Mail on 24 April 1959, ’12 Acres of ugliness being razed, Merthyr’s biggest face lift. More than 200 houses, two shops, two pubs and a club were put under the sledge-hammer in one of the biggest redevelopment schemes in South Wales’.

An aerial view of Caedraw before it was redeveloped. Caedraw School can be seen in the bottom right hand corner with the gasworks in front of it, next to the river. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

The official opening of the Caedraw ‘Central Housing Redevelopment Project’ was on Thursday 22 April, 1965 by James Griffiths, Secretary of State for Wales. The Caedraw Scheme of 193 dwellings consisted of 66 one-bedroomed flats in the 12 storey point block. There are 64 two-bedroom maisonettes, 24 three-bedroomed maisonettes and 8 bed-sitting room flats in 8 4-storey blocks. The remainder of the accommodation is contained in two 3-storey blocks containing 19 two-bedroomed maisonettes, 9 one-bedroom flats and 3 bed-sitting room flats. The tender of George Wimpey and Co. Ltd. was accepted by the Council in January 1963 and work on the flats commenced four months later in April. The completion date in the contract was April 1965 but the scheme was completed and handed over six months ahead of this date.

Caedraw in 1965 after the redevelopment. Photo from the official ‘Opening’ programme of the Caedraw Project

Each block of flats was named after an important figure in the history of Wales. St Tydfil’s Court (the Celtic Saint buried here), Portal House (Portal wrote the report of the Royal Commission of 1935 into the state of Merthyr Tydfil), Wilson Court  (Harold Wilson was Labour Prime Minister when the flats were opened), Buckland House (Lord Buckland a wealthy financier born in Merthyr), Attlee House (Clement Attlee Labour Prime Minister after 1945), Hywel House (Hywel Dda was a Welsh King who had the laws of the country written down), Trevithick House (Trevithick was the first to use a locomotive to transport iron from Penydarren and unwillingly carried passengers too).

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

How well do you know Merthyr? The answers

Here are the answers to the questions I posed you last week. How did you do?

  1. What was the name of St Tydfil’s father?

King Brychan Brycheiniog

  1. Who founded the Cyfarthfa Ironworks in 1765?

Anthony Bacon

  1. Who was Merthyr’s first Labour M.P.?

James Keir Hardie

  1. What was the name of the first chapel to be built in Merthyr town?

Ynysgau Chapel

  1. What was the name of the pub that Lord Nelson stayed in when he visited Merthyr in 1800?

The Star Inn in Caedraw

  1. Nixonville in Merthyr Vale is named after whom?

John Nixon, the founder of Merthyr Vale Colliery

  1. Who has ‘God Forgive Me’ inscribed on his grave?

Robert Thompson Crawshay

  1. Where was the Olympia Skating Rink?

In Pontmorlais, just further up than the Theatre Royal

  1. Which Merthyr-born boxer won the WBC World featherweight title in 1968?

Howard Winstone

  1. Where would you find St Matthias Church?

Treharris

  1. The Bwthyn Bach Inn is missing from the Old Merthyr Tydfil list of pubs, where was it situated?

At the corner of what was known as the Broad Pavement, opposite was the name given to a street built behind the Palace Cinema.

  1. Where was Tai Harri Blawd?

Behind the Theatre Royal and bordering the old Tramroad

  1. What is the area known as Daniel’s Waterloo?

The area now known as the Grove

  1. Where was the Merthyr Tydfil clay pipe factory?

In Vaughan Street, Caedraw

  1. What did the factory next to Factory Cottages make?

Factory Cottages were alongside the old Drill Hall and given this name as they adjoined a flannel factory.

  1. How did Storey Arms get its name?

The first landlord there was a Mr Storey

  1. Where was Pendwranfach?

A narrow street by the Fountain …… turn left at the bottom of the High Street

  1. What is the real name of the pub often called The Spite?

The Farmer’s Arms, Mountain Hare

  1. Who was Miss Florence Smithson and what building is she associated with?

A famous actress associated with the Theatre Royal

  1. Why was an area by St Tydfil’s Church named Lle Sais?

Its name is derived from the fact that most of the English people brought in to the area to work in the Penydarren Ironworks lived here

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.

Taking the Nantygwenith Road first, with the exception of one occupied by David Evans, the master carpenter at Cyfarthfa (father of the Thomas Evans whose brewery has been mentioned), there was not another right away up to the gatehouse of the Turnpike on the right hand side, but there were dwellings on the other (the left) side all the way, and persons who resided there who should be mentioned.

Before doing so, however, it may be proper to state what kind of scientific society met at the Dynevor Arms, and what was then called philosophical instruments, made by W. and S. Jones, of High Holborn, kept there in the meeting room. Amongst other things attempted was the formation of a duck, which it was reputed they nearly accomplished, but extravagancies aside I can from recollection say there were very good instruments there, one being a telescope of about five inches in diameter.

The Dynevor Arms in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Notwithstanding much that was desirable for sanitary conditions, there was a good deal of intellectual activity, and if any exceeding strong temperance advocates, deride the statement he can be told of a somewhat analogous one held near Birmingham that was frequented by persons whose names are world known, to wit, James Watt, Priestley and the time of meeting as near as may be to others whose forethought went so far as to have the time of meeting as near as may be to full moon, and were called in consequence the Lunar Society. There are few of any offices that that do not today benefit from one or two of their meetings.

On the left, the corner house of the Aberdare and Nantygwenith Roads, a grocer’s shop was opened by Mr Beddoe, next was a “gin shop”, so called, subsequently kept by Mr Lewis Lewis, superintendent of the Dowlais Stables previously, and afterwards of Pontyrhun; a few cottages followed and then a road. It was up this, and on the first opening to the left the Rev David John, the Unitarian Minister, taught his pupils. He was, I think, a good Welsh scholar, but I am certain of him being a good mathematician. He Had three sons and one daughter, the eldest Mathew, some years after carrying on the iron foundry business in Bryant’s old brewery premises.

The upper corner of this road was the grocery establishment of a Mr Edward Roach. He was a fine powerful man, and they used to say that seeing a woman, with a child in her arms, pursued by a bull, he rushed out and boldly attacked it.

Roach’s grocery shop in the early 1900s. Photo courtesy of the Alan George archive.

Next above was the Patriot Inn, kept by Mr William Howells. He had two daughters, the youngest of whom was wooed by Mr William Spiller, then travelling around the hills selling flour on behalf of himself and a Mr Browne. The flour was called “Spiller and Browne”. The latter name seems to have passed, but the former has developed into a ‘household word’ in the quality of their product, and extension of business at Cardiff. The firm Spiller and Browne was then at Bridgwater.

A notice from the Merthyr Guardian dated 20th January 1838 advertising an auction to be held at the Patriot Inn, Georgetown

To be continued at a later date……

The Morlais Brook – part 2

by Clive Thomas

From here in pre-industrial times the brook continued in its efforts to cut deeply into the country rock, passing  Cae Racca, the fields of the Hafod Farm and down into Cwm Rhyd y bedd. Unfortunately with the construction of the new Ivor Works in 1839, this area became the tipping ground of the thousands of tons of waste produced by the furnaces, forges and rolling mills. Over the next century the whole form of the land became radically altered with tip and railway embankment obscuring its course. It eventually emerged  into ‘The Cwm’, as a poor remnant of  its former self, passing in the mid-nineteenth  century the Dowlais  Old Brewery and Gellifaelog House on its way down to Gellifaelog Bridge. This had been built in the second half of the eighteenth century to carry the Abernant to Rhyd-y-blew turnpike Road and would eventually become the location which every local would know as ‘The Bont’.

The Nant Morlais flowing through ‘The Cwm’ in the 1940s. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive.
A map showing the Nant Morlais passing through the Bont and showing Gellifaelog House and Gellifaelog Bridge

A little below here, it had its junction with Nant Dowlais on the banks of which the first Dowlais furnace had been constructed in 1759. Two centuries later, in the 1960’s with the building of the Heads of the Valleys Road and the general landscaping of the 1980’s the stream’s way through the ‘Cwm’ was again changed quite comprehensively,  although shrub and tree planting rendered the valley more aesthetically pleasing. Unfortunately, it is only the archive map or faint ancient photographs which now help inform us of its rich and varied history.

Site of confluence of the Morlais and Dowlais Brooks. The old turnpike road went to the left, crossing the Morlais at Gellifaelog Bridge. The New Road was originally one of the railway inclines of the Dowlais Works. Photo Clive Thomas

Before being confined to its anonymous, culverted bed, the brook’s surface course from The Bont was once again encroached upon by massive tipping from the Dowlais Ironworks. On the opposite bank, once the fields of Gellifaelog and Gwaunfarren Farms, what was to become Penydarren High Street would be established. This ribbon development of dwellings, shops and places of worship was constructed above the steep valley side here and would eventually form a fundamental link between the growing settlements of Merthyr Tydfil and Dowlais. As early as  1811 though,  I.G. Wood’ s print of the Penydarren Ironworks shows our mountain cataract to be already much altered, confined and despoiled by the growth of that iron manufactory. Today, the location is completely transformed from the area of desolation we knew in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. It is landscaped, green and partly wooded but it is a great pity the planners could not have given it a more inspirational name than Newlands Park.

The Morlais Brook flowing behind Penydarren High Street in the 1940s. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Below the site of the works its course altered a little again and helped define that spur of high ground the Romans had chosen, probably in the early second century AD as the site for one of their forts. I am sure these ancient invaders would have had no inkling of the iniquities that men of later centuries would perpetrate on the stream and landscape hereabouts. Today, Nant Morlais  reveals itself only briefly to the rear of the Theatre Royal and Trevithick memorial before disappearing at Pontmorlais, the location of another of those early turnpike bridges.

An 1851 map showing the course of the Morlais Brook through Pontmorlais
The Morlais Brook at Pontmorlais in the 1940s. Wesley Chapel is in the background. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Hidden behind the buildings of the town’s Upper High Street there is one final reminder of the stream’s rural and unsullied past. Mill Lane, more recently the rather secret location of Mr. Fred Bray’s sweet factory, is the site of a water mill where our agricultural forefathers ground the corn grown in the fields of the local farms.

A map from the 1860s showing the old mill.

Whilst the old buildings and general dereliction which not so long ago framed the stream’s last few hundred metres have long disappeared and been replaced by car parking and civic buildings, a large portion of Abermorlais Tip remains to mark the point where the waters of  Nant Morlais coalesce with those of the parent Taf. Although partly confined to a subterranean existence, through the more recent efforts of Man, ‘The Stinky’ has been able to rid itself of the foul and fetid mantle of its past.

Where it all ends. The confluence of the Morlais with the Taf. Photo Clive Thomas

The Morlais Brook – part 1

by Clive Thomas

It was not until September 1968 that I first became acquainted with ‘The Stinky’, the name given to the Morlais Brook by past generations of children and adults who lived along its banks.

Not being a Merthyr boy I was really unaware of its existence, let alone details of its course and history. Where I lived in Troedyrhiw we had the River Taf across the fields of Bill Jones’ farm and our only brook was an old Hill’s Plymouth Collieries’ watercourse which drained numerous disused mountainside coal levels. Despite its origins, the water was clear and clean, drinkable, dammed in the summer holidays, paddled and bathed in. When bored or just at a loose end we raced empty Bondman tobacco tins along its course, running to keep up with the flow and ensure that our own particular tin wasn’t held up by a fallen branch or trapped in an inconvenient eddy. On first encounter I couldn’t imagine any of those activities taking place along ‘The Stinky’ and my initial observations confirmed that its local name was not in any way exaggerated. Indeed, the name appropriately characterised some of its more sinister and less praiseworthy qualities.

The stretch I first got to know was, what a student of physical geography would term, the stream’s ‘Old Age’, that is the portion towards the end of its life. Indeed, one might say at its very death, for union with the parent Taf was imminent and in 1968 the confluence of the two was observable, not as now concealed beneath a highway and pedestrian pathway. To the south of the stream were some of the streets and courtways of the town, many of which were derelict and already marked as candidates for slum clearance. Within two or three years these would be swept away. Rising up from its northern bank was the huge tip of waste produced over a century earlier by the Penydarren Ironworks, its industrial waste concealed for the most part by surprisingly lush vegetation. The British Tip, as it was sometimes known, took its name from the British and Foreign Bible Society, founders of the academy which graced its summit. On its plateau top was a once grand construction, a building of a century’s age but which in many respects had seen better times.  Abermorlais, the school’s official name, was most appropriate, as it proclaimed its location, at the union of Taf and Nant Morlais. Unfortunately,  there was to be seen no evidence in the stream here of a course well run, more confirmation of ill use, where Sixties’ waste and detritus continued to be added to over a century’s massive abuse. A sad end indeed to what no doubt had once been in pre-industrial times a clear and unspoilt mountain stream.

A map from the 1860s showing the Morlais Brook (flowing East to West) entering the Taff (flowing North to South). Abermorlais School is shown overlooking the scene.

Perhaps though, to gain a more comprehensive appreciation of the stream’s course, it is probably better to follow the guidance of another Thomas, and “begin at the beginning”.

Nant Morlais forms from numerous small tributaries on the slopes of Twynau Gwynion and Cefnyr Ystrad on the 560 metre contour above Pantysgallog and  Dowlais. In a distance of seven and a half kilometres it descends 440 metres to its confluence with the Taf. It’s not easy walking country with the gently dipping beds of Millstone grit overlying the Carboniferous Limestone. The surface is rough with ankle breaking rocks and many sink holes to topple into. Among many, but by far the largest of these is Pwll Morlais, a deep and supreme example of what happens where the underlying Limestone has been eroded and the grit collapses into the void. Depending on the season this can be a steep sided, empty peat banked hole or after heavy rain, full to overflowing with a brew of brown froth. The song of the skylark can be enjoyed here on a fine summer day but it is also a solitary place, disconcerting or eerie even, when mist or low cloud descends and the lone walker is surprised by the frantic cry of a disturbed snipe.

Pwll Morlais. Photo Clive Thomas

On a clear day the view to the south is the trough of the Taf Valley. Always viewed into the sun so never really clear, with only silhouettes, shadows and reflections to give a hint of detail. One wonders how different it would have looked when all of the works below would have been at their height?

From Pwll Morlais, the stream is called Tor-Gwyn by the Ordnance Survey, until its junction with another parallel tributary, and thereafter it becomes Nant Morlais proper. The stream’s descent is gentle to begin with over the hard resistant gritstone. It is along this stretch  that there is much evidence of the importance placed on the brook as a source of water power for the rapidly growing Dowlais Works during the early part of the nineteenth century. There are still the remains of sluices and numerous places where the course has been altered, or feeders led its water off to be stored in numerous hillside reservoirs.

Sluice where water was diverted from the stream into the Pitwellt Pond. Photo Clive Thomas

Where one of these diversions fed the extensive but now dry Pitwellt Pond above Pengarnddu, the Brook leaves the Millstone Grit and begins to cut a deep gorge into the softer Coal Measure rocks. From here there is more urgency in its flow, its course becomes narrower and more confined. At several locations it caused railway builders of the past to pause and consider the inconvenience of its course which would necessitate the construction of embankments and small bridges. The line which took limestone to the ironworks at Rhymney crossed hereabouts, as did the Brecon and Merthyr Railway on its way north over the Beacons and the London and North Western on its descent into Merthyr Tydfil via the ‘Miler’ or  Morlais Tunnel.

The stream cuts down into some of the softer beds of the Coal Measures. Photo Clive Thomas

More significantly however, it is within this section of the stream that geologists have been able to discover some of the secrets of the South Wales Coalfield and probably many hundreds of school pupils, university students, and local amateur geologists will have benefitted from the instruction of teachers like Ron Gethin, Tom Sharpe or John Perkins. Like myself on many occasions I am sure, they have stumbled down its steep banks into the course of the stream below Blaen Morlais Farm in search of  Gastriocerassubcranatum or Gastriocerascancellatum . Not valuable minerals  these, but the important fossils which would indicate the location of one or other of the marine bands which were significant in determining the sequence of sedimentation of the rocks generally, and the coal seams in particular.

To be continued…..