Tag: Cwm Rhyd y Bedd

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.

Assuming ourselves at the junction of the Mardy and High Street, we will try to go (as many did during the turnpike gate days) around to Dowlais. The Star is on the right hand, a small house and shop on the left, the Mardy House being close, in fact the front garden touched the wall of Shop House, and Mardy House itself faced out to the High Street. This was the new front; a portion of the older part adjoined and had a thatched roof. It was occupied by a Mrs David Meyrick, I believe (Mr David Meyrick Having died there). Adjoining the Mardy was the residence of Mr Edmund Harman.

An extract from the 1851 Ordnance Survey Map showing the area in question

Gillar Street comes in, and on the opposite corner was a shop where (if not mistaken) Mr William Harris first opened on his own account; then the residence of Mr William Rowland, the parish clerk. At the making of the Vale of Neath Railway it was necessary to take part of his garden, and the navvies were annoyed at his troubling so much about some fruit trees. Naturally they would move them in the early hours of the day to avoid interference, but on one occasion he went out while they were doing so, and heard one of the navvies say to the other “Look out Jim; here’s the b_____ old Amen coming”. His wrath was not modified by the hearing of this, but that he did hear it is well known.

An opening into the Cae Gwyn followed, and the Fountain public house was upon the corner of the Tramroad. Upon the right side behind the Star were some five or six cottages, and after an opening was passed that came from Pendwranfach, the Court premises and Garden followed. The house itself has been improved since then, but it was always the parent house of the town. The Glove and Shears adjoined, and abutting on its gable was the Tramroad. Just here will be spoken of again in reference to the Tramroad. Now however, we will cross it and ascend the hill – Twynyrodyn.

Some not over good cottages lined a part of the way; there was a better residence on the right before coming to Zion, the Welsh Baptist Chapel, and opposite the chapel was the residence of the Rev Enoch Williams. Facing down the road just above was the White Horse public house, with a row of cottages with gardens in front. There were but few cottages beyond Zion Chapel on that side.

The White Horse Inn. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

At the end of the White Horse, and behind the row of cottages, is the original ground used for burial of those who died from the cholera epidemic in the very early thirties (those who died at the subsequent visitation being buried in Thomastown, near the Union Workhouse).

The road had few if any cottages. In a dell, which may be called the end of Cwm Rhyd-y-bedd, there was one, and some a little further on to the left. The ‘Mountain Hare’ was the name of the public house built there adjoining the railroad leading from the Winch Fawr to the Penydarren Works.

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