HLW (MGL) 2

Merthyr Tydfil  

2001  

Outstanding  

Designated  

Merthyr Tydfil occupies a natural basin at the head of the Taff valley. High hills and ridges reach 450m above OD on all sides, with development constrained to the basin floor and smaller tributary valleys of the Taff, which itself provides the only natural route out of the basin to the south east. However, it is not topography alone that has shaped the town, but the mineral resources contained within its hinterland. It was probably the largest iron-making town in the world in the early to mid-19th century, with an output calculated to be a quarter of that of the entire United States of America. The town, and its associated landscape, was rapidly transformed from a modest village in the 1750s to the largest town in Wales by 1801. Despite extensive recent land reclamation and the sanitisation of the surrounding waste tips, overall Merthyr still retains its industrial landscape character as the most significant Welsh town of the Industrial Revolution. The town and its environs remain a potent example of an internationally renowned industrial landscape of the 18th and 19th centuries and a permanent reminder of man’s exploitation of the landscape. The primarily late 18th to 19th centuries landscape comprises numerous relict elements and foci set within the present landscape. These individual elements consist of the remains of large ironworks, remnants of the associated coal mining industry, water power leats, an early iron bridge, communication systems, including early tramroads, tips, terraced industrial housing, and the Ironmasters’ house, Cyfarthfa Castle. Merthyr Tydfil, however, retains not only its economic significance, but also its importance as a religious, literary and political centre. The area identified here contains many and diverse elements, which include Merthyr’s Dowlais Ironworks, established in 1759, and probably the first such works to use coke in South Wales. It was followed by the foundation of other ironworks such as Plymouth in 1763, Cyfarthfa in 1765 and Penydarren in 1784. Other subsidiary works were created in the early 19th century at Ynysfach by Cyfarthfa, Ivor by Dowlais, Dyffryn by Plymouth, with further forges at Pentrebach, a part of Plymouth. Surviving remains include the renowned furnace bank at the Cyfarthfa Ironworks, where six out of its seven, late 18th century blast-furnances and its ranges of calcining kilns, survive substantially intact. At the Dowlais Ironworks the remains include the great stables and the blast-engine house, which have been restored. The remains of the Ynysfach Ironworks consist of one blast engine house and four early 19th century furnaces. The engine house is also restored and acts as a museum of the iron industry. Locally, early communication systems survive, though to varying degrees. Adjoining the Cyfarthfa Ironworks lies the Pontycafnau bridge built in 1793, and the first ever iron railway bridge to be built. The bridge has added significance in that it had a combined use as an aqueduct.The Gyrnos tramroad which used the Pontycafnau bridge carried limestone from the Gyrnos quarries and exists today as a scenic footpath retaining its stone sleeper blocks.The remains of limekilns and fulling mills survive on either side of the route. Elsewhere, the line of the Penydarren tramroad, built in 1802 to carry iron by horsedrawn tram, survives and is also historically significant as the route of the first steam-hauled railway journey by Richard Trevithick’s 1804 locomotive. The tramroad also includes a tunnel constructed under the Plymouth Ironworks. Short sections of the famous Glamorganshire Canal, built in the 1790s, also survive as important landscape features, including a restored section in front of Chapel Row. This is crossed by the relocated Rhydycar bridge which is an early iron girder bridge dating from the 1790s. Chapel Row itself was built by the Cyfarthfa Iron Company as workers’ houses, one of which is restored, both as an example of a period ironworker’s cottage and also as the birthplace of the renowned composer Dr Joseph Parry. In a sharp distinction which reflects the other social extreme of the Merthyr Ironmasters’ activities, Cyfarthfa Castle, overlooking the Cyfarthfa Ironworks, was the largest and grandest Ironmaster’s house in Merthyr Tydfil, and amongst the most notable surviving industrialist’s house in Wales. The house is situated in 64ha of grounds, which were landscaped by the Crawshay family to include woodlands and a lake. This grand house and its parkland setting also provide an interesting and important contrast to the other relict landscape features of Merthyr.