Home
About the Society
Membership
Publications
Lectures
Links
Historical Notes
Cymraeg
Presidents

Chapter 6
INDUSTRY IN ABERDARE VALLEY BEFORE 1759.

1 Introduction

Owing to the abundant supply of surface iron ore on the outcrop of the South Wales coalfield, iron making has been going on since 2400 B.C. Roman iron has been found at Penydarren in Merthyr and Cwmdare. Iron was mined at Morlais Castle in 1270; small bloomeries worked at Abercanaid, Merthyr in 1478; a small ironworks was at Pentrebach in Merthyr in 1555. Anthony Morley, the Sussex ironmaster had a works at Pontygwaith, Merthyr in 1583. (“History of Merthyr,” NUT, pp.l58‒159).

Sion ap Hywel had three furnaces at Cae Luce at Llwydcoed, Aberdare in 1663. In 1666 a furnace at Hirwaun in the Aberdare valley produced a ton a week. In 1680 at Cae Cashier, Cwmaman, Aberdare, two Irish brothers called Hughes had a small ironworks. There was a forge at Llanwynno three miles from the works at Cwmaman.

2. Method of Making the Iron before 1759.

(a) The beehive furnace was set up on the northern fringe of the South Wales coalfield, where wood, water, fireclay, iron ore and limestone were found together. These are all found together from Hirwaun to Brynmawr on the Heads-of-the-Valleys track-way. But places chosen in the Aberdare valley were as follows:—

  1. Hirwaun
  2. Llwydcoed
  3. Bwllfa
  4. Cwmdare
  5. Abernant
  6. Cwmaman.


These places were nearly all in the little tributary valleys of the main Cynon river valley.

(b) In the narrow part of the valley the stream was damned, a water wheel erected, a bellows was installed, iron ore was dug from the mountainside, wood was turned into charcoal, limestone was brought from the Penderyn, four or even eight miles away. The iron was then taken by pack-mule to forges at Llanwynno, Troedyrhiw, Brecon or Machen.

(“Economic Geography of the Aberdare Valley,” J. Yockney. 1956).

3. Earliest Coal Trade in South Wales and Aberdare.

(a) The Romans worked Monmouthshire coal. Coal was worked at Llanfabon in 1281; at Neath Abbey in 1284; Swansea had coalmines in the 1300s; and Caerphilly mined coal in 1376. Coal was exported to Ireland from Milford Haven in 1600, whilst coal was being used in copper and glass making in Swansea, Milford and Neath before 1600. Coal was long used in the brewery trade and by smiths. Farmers used it for drying corn, malt, barley and burning lime.

(“The Miners of South Wales,” E.W. Evans, U.W.P. p.1).

(b) The river Cynon and its tributaries have cut deeply incised beds through the upper coal measures of the north outcrop of the South Wales coalfield in the Aberdare valley.

A hundred yards from the ancient church of St. John, the village church of Aberdare, a seam of coal a yard thick outcrops in the bank of the little River Dare. On the slope of the hill on which stands the Mardy House (i.e., the Steward’s House of the Lord of Glamorgan), the famous four feet seam of coal outcrops. In many parts of the valley, thick seams are but a few feet beneath the loam or boulder clay. With the steep gradients and heavy rainfall of the Aberdare rivers, landslides occur over the years and the coal would be exposed where the seams occur in the hillsides. It is hardly likely that the people of the settlements there would miss seeing and using the coal thus temporarily exposed, until the accessible coal had been worked away, the overburden had grown too dangerous to handle or too laborious to deal with at that spot. Tradition would perpetuate the areas where coal could be easily mined by tunnels driven into the hillsides.

(c) Sir John Stradling, (died 1637), once Sheriff of Glamorgan, wrote:—

“Every farm in the hill country of Glamorgan hath its own cole hole”.

He also wrote a ballad on the riches of upland Glamorgan: —

“And in Glamorgan’s hille parts

Cole greatly doth abounde

For goodness and for plenty too

Its equal never was founde.
 

With wood and iron, lede and salt,

And lime aboundant lie

And everything that mankind want

This land doth well supplie”.

(Lecture notes of Rev. Ivor Parry. 1964).

From these and other records it is evident that coal was well known as a fuel in upland Glamorgan and South Wales long before the modern period.

(d) In the 1600s the lords of Glamorgan, the Earls of Pembroke, leased coal-bearing lands to men producing coal for sale in the Aberdare valley.

  1. “December 20th 1614.
    William, Earl of Pembroke: to William Morgan of Llantrisant and his sons. The Lease of Bryn Pillog, Gwaune y Menith, and Pen y Fedw (Aberdare) with power to dig coal therein, and also in and upon Nant Melyn, for three lives. Rents: 5s.10d. for the lands, and 5/- for the coals”.
     
  2. Similar leases were granted for coalmines in the Aberdare valley in the years between 1619 and the year 1697.
     
  3. In the year 1701:
    From the Trustees of Henrietta, Countess Dowager of Pembroke (Sir Jeffreys Jeffrey and John Jeffreys)
    To Evan Moses and Lewis William,
    The Lease of Bryn Pillog, Gwaune y Menith and Pen y Fedw... and liberty to dig coals thereunder; and under Nant Melyn and Bryn Glas for 71 years or three lives: Rent £5.
    (Survey Book. Memorandum of the Lordship of Glamorgan). (Lecture Notes of Rev. Ivor Parry. 1964).
     
  4. These small Aberdare mines supplied coal to the villages and farms of southern Breconshire. The coal was transported on the backs of mules, and lime was brought back on the return journey. The coal was sold at the mine-head for ½d. a sack. This trade in coal was taking place all along the northern rim of the coalfield in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire.
     
  5. Method of Working the Coal.
    The coal was worked by means of small levels or tunnels driven into the side of the mountain where it was known the seam existed. Timber propping was used and the coal extracted until it became too difficult to transport the coal from the face, or the gas made it too dangerous to work, or the tunnel fell in.
     
  6. Other Aberdare Valley Mines. It was known that four level mines were being worked in Aberdare in 1750. That at Tir-Lluest in Llwydcoed had a small canal from which the coal was hauled out in long, narrow boats.
     

This small-scale coal industry continued its production for a market that was circumscribed by the difficulty of transport by horse and mule. Aberdare and the uplands of Glamorgan were too inaccessible to be worth developing for the growing market that existed in Britain for the use of coal.

(Lecture Notes - “History of Aberdare,” Rev. Ivor Parry. 1964).