Chapter 12
THE ABERDARE VALLEY IN THE YEARS 1875–1901.

1. End of the Iron Trade in the Aberdare Valley.

Aberdare as an industrial area had been brought into being by the ironworks that had been set up here in the years 1759–1845, but by the year 1875 all the five works had closed down forever.

The first to close was the Hirwaun Works, which shut down in 1859. It was then owned by the Crawshay family of Cyfarthfa, Merthyr Tydfil, who had bought it in 1817. They had greatly increased production and modernized the works until 900 men worked there. An average of 9,000 tons of iron and 55,000 tons of coal were produced.

The firm of Snape produced small quantities of crucible steel at Hirwaun until 1892.

In 1872 the Gadlys ironworks ceased production. It had always been a small works employing about 250 men and making about 3,000‒2,000 tons of iron a year according to demand. Since 1837 the owners, the Wayne family, had become more interested in the coal trade.

Aberaman ironworks owned by Crawshay Bailey was sold by him to the new Powell Duffryn Coal Company Ltd., in 1870. Its furnaces were closed in the depression of the 1870s but the other parts of the works were merged into the repairs department of the P.D. Co. Ltd.

The Llwydcoed ironworks (1799) and the Aberdare iron-works (1801) had been merged in 1819 to form the Aberdare Iron Company. From that date, costly lawsuits between the partners Scales, Thompsons, Fothergills and others had hindered the full development of the firm.

In 1871 the Aberdare Iron Company, through its works, mines, quarries and outcrops, gave work to 4,000 men. In 1875 the firm went bankrupt. Its chief director, Richard Fothergill, M.P., left the district. The ironworks closed down at Abernant and Llwydcoed. There was great distress and thousands emigrated.

In 1878 the Vicar of Aberdare wrote to “The Times” about the distress. He received £500 a week in cash. By March 1878 £6,000 was received and mountains of clothes. Father Hamelin opened a soup-kitchen where 100 children and 200 adults were fed daily. That year there were 7,349 persons on poor relief out of 35,000 population.

(“History of Aberdare,” Lecture 24th March 1965 — Rev. I. Parry).

2. Reasons for the end of Iron making in the Valley.

Why did the iron trade die out in the Aberdare valley alter 115 years of expansion?

Two reasons are usually given: —

(a) The works were too far from the coast for import of ore.

(b) Isolation of the area from the chief iron markets.

Reasons why I think that this is not a true reason: —

(a) Aberdare is only 25 miles from three big South Wales ports.

(b) Aberdare had the best rail connections of all the valley towns to the rest of Britain.

I think that the truth must be sought in the personal character of the Aberdare ironmasters. They lost interest in iron making and turned to coal or retired, or were more interested in politics than their works.

(See the book “The Crawshay Dynasty” — J. Addis. U.W.P.)

Iron making remained at Merthyr until 1931; it still remains at Ebbw Vale; both places much more inaccessible than was Aberdare.

3. The Remains of the Iron Trade in Aberdare Valley.

All that remains of the iron trade in the valley after five centuries of iron-making are the ruins of the works, the waste mounds and the names of streets, parks, and inns named after the former ironmaster families.

4. Aberdare and the Coal Era of 1875‒1901.

(a) With the end of the ironworks in Aberdare in 1875, the production of steam coal for export to all parts of the world became the great basic industry of the Aberdare valley.

In 1875 there were 21 colliery companies operating 50 collieries in the Aberdare valley. Some companies had only one pit or two, but two companies, one a limited liability company, the Powell Duffryn (1864) Ltd., and a partnership, Samuel Thomas, Osborn and Riches, were destined to have, in the years to come a profound effect on the fate of the South Wales coal trade. These were already big companies with pits in other Welsh valleys. Two other companies in the Aberdare valley were also branching out into other valleys. They were Nixons Navigation of Mountain Ash, and David Davis of Blaengwawr.

(b) Expansion of the Coal Industry the Aberdare Valley.

The growth of coal production in the valley can be compared over the years.

Coal Production 1841–1871.

Aberdare	South Wales
1841 — 120,000 tons. (1)	4 million tons.* (2)
1851 — 500,000 tons.	6 million tons.*
1861 — 2 million tons.	11 million tons.*
1871 — 3 million tons.*	14 million tons.

(1) Estimates based on data from Rev. I. Parry’s Historical articles in the ‘Aberdare Leader’ – 1960.

(2) Estimated from data in “The Miners of South Wales – E. Evans. U.L.P. p. 237.

(c) Miners in the Aberdare Valley in 1875.

The number of workers in or about the mines of the Aberdare valley in 1875 was about 12,500.*

Estimate based on figures on page 241 of “The Miners of South Wales”. The population of the Aberdare valley had grown rapidly in the three decades of the coal export boom.

(d) Population of the Aberdare Valley.

	Aberdare Parish	Mountain Ash (Llanwynno Parish)
1841	6,741	1,614
1871	35,900	11,463

Total population of the valley in 1871 — 46,463.

A vast urban development had led to the rise of two townships: Aberdare and Mountain Ash. In the same valley they could have united into the county borough of the Aberdare valley but they were separated by the folly of the leading citizens of Mountain Ash and their chief landlord, the Hon. Henry Austin Bruce M.P., Home Secretary in 1865, who granted the people of Mountain Ash a Local Health Board of their own in that year.

(e) Concentration of the Ownership of the Coal Industry in the Aberdare Valley — 1875–1903.

After the bitter strikes of 1871–73–75, the setting-up of the Conciliation Agreement for settling wage agreements based on the Sliding Scale of the selling price of coal prevented an all-out coalfield strike, though it did not prevent local disputes, often of a very bitter character in Aberdare valley.

(Strikes 1893–1897).

This period of relative industrial calm was one of the concentration of ownership of the mines in Aberdare into fewer hands.

Coal Companies in Aberdare valley in:—

	1875	1903
No. of companies	21	9
No. of mines	50	54

In 1875 the big firms of the Aberdare valley were:—

The Powell Duffryn Ltd.	16 mines
Nixon's Navigation Ltd.	6 mines
David Davis Ltd.	6 mines
S. Thomas & Partners	6 mines
J. Lewis & Co. (Abernant)	6 mines

What happened to the other Companies?

In 1875 the Aberdare Iron Co.’s mines were taken over by a new firm called James Lewis & Co. (Abernant).

In 1885 David Davis Ltd., sold their Aberdare mines to the Powell Duffryn Ltd., and afterwards concentrated their interests in the Rhondda Fach (Little Rhondda).

After the death of Samuel Thomas in 1877, his sons and partners concentrated their activities in big new pits in Clydach Vale, in the Rhondda Fawr (Big Rhondda), keeping only one small mine near their home at Ysguborwen House, Aberdare.

In 1871 Daniel Rees, grandson-in-law of Lucy Thomas of Merthyr, who started the Welsh coal export trade in 1829, sold his Lettyshenkin Pit to Burnyeat, Brown & Co., the big Liverpool coal factors. Ann Rees, his elder daughter, had recently married young William Thomas Lewis, M.E., 30-year-old chief mineral agent of the Bute Estate at the Mardy House, and the organizer of the coalowners of the Aberdare valley into the Steam Coal Owners Association. With the wealth of the Rees family behind him W.T. Lewis became a formidable coal industrialist in his own right, and ended as the first Lord Merthyr.

In 1887, William Cory Ltd. (Penrikyber Navigation Co. Ltd.) sank two large collieries at lower Mountain Ash.

In 1891 a new company was formed at Aberdare to take over the Aberdare collieries of J. Brogden and Sons Ltd., at Cwmdare, Aberdare. The new company was called the Bwllfa & Merthyr Dare Steam Coal Co. Ltd. Head of the company was Rees Llewellyn, M.E., who was the head of a family that was now to play a most prominent part in the development of the Welsh coal trade in the next fifty years.

In 1903 the Bute estate took over the active management of the mines belonging to the firm of Heath & Evens Co., which had worked the Werfa Pits since 1845, the mines of James Lewis & Co. (Abernant), in addition to which the Bute worked several mines at Hirwaun.

(“History of Pioneers South Wales Coal Trade,” E. Wilkins).

(f) The Strike of 1898 — The End of an Era in South Wales.

In 1898 the miners of the district associations gave notice to the South Wales Coalowners Association that they were going to demand: —

(1) A 10% increase in wages.

(2) A 10% wage increase with each 1s. 0d. per ton increase in the selling price of coal.

(3) The minimum coal audit price to be not less than 10s. 0d. per ton.

Sir William Thomas Lewis, Mardy House, Aberdare, led the South Wales coalowners. He was considered arrogant and ruthless and after bitter negotiations, the miners’ claims were rejected. In March 1898 the men struck work and remained out for six months until September 1898. In that month they returned, partially victorious, with a 5% advance and a four-year agreement.

Throughout the ’98 Strike, many of the coal owners kept their pits working and, therefore, made a lot of money. These owners did not belong to the South Wales Coal Owners Association.

The ’98 Strike had two important repercussions:—

(a) It ended the disliked Sliding Scale Wage Agreement.

(b) It led to the merging of the valley unions in the new united South Wales Miners Federation.

(“History of the South Wales Miners Federation” – Ness Edwards).