HLW (MGl) 5

The Rhondda  

2001  

Special  

Designated  

The geographical area of the Rhondda identified here comprises two narrow, steep sided valleys, the Rhondda Fawr and the Rhondda Fach, situated in the heart of the Glamorgan coalfield. The two river valleys, rarely more than 0.5km wide, wind their way south-eastwards on a roughly parallel course before converging at Porth y Cymmer (Porth), the confluence of the Rhondda river, which flows a further 6km to reach the River Taf at Pontypridd. In between, and on either side of the valleys, are narrow ridges with areas of upland plateaux interspersed with local summits between 300m and 600m above OD. The flanks of the ridges are heavily dissected by small tributary valleys, and where harder rock occurs, distinctive spurs have been formed, which protrude into, and block the prospects along, the main valleys. This historic landscape area of the Rhondda was dramatically and prodigiously created in the second half of the 19th century, and is one of the largest and best known mining conurbations and coalfield communities in Britain. This renowned area, prior to its relatively sudden and dynamic exploitation, was famous for its natural beauty and solitude, its hillsides covered with small farms, sheep walks, dense indigenous woodland and streams rich in trout and salmon. In 1803, the antiquarian traveller, B. H. Malkin, described the Rhondda as the most beautiful of all the mountain districts in Wales, and its upper peaks as the ‘Alps of Glamorgan’. Today, the Rhondda, although devoid of its former economic base, retains intact its supporting infrastructure and is the most important industrial and cultural landscape of its kind surviving in Wales. The discovery of steam coal in 1855 was practically the sole basis for massive development. It inaugurated a coal rush, perhaps unknown elsewhere, and made the Rhondda into one of the most productive coal mining areas nationally. In 1913, 41,000 miners working out of 53 pits in the Rhondda, mined nine and a half million tons of coal, more than one-sixth of the total output of the South Wales coalfield. The population of under 1000 in l851 rose to 162,717 by 1921, with the density of human habitation reaching over 9000 persons per square kilometre of the built-up area. Between 1869 and 1910, the amount of coal required for the British navy, domestic fuel needs and export around the world, increased sevenfold. This huge expansion of coal output in the valleys contributed significantly to the wealth, industry and commerce of Victorian Britain, and the people and communities of the Rhondda also made a lasting and inimitable contribution to the social, political, spiritual, educational and cultural life of the nation. The pre-industrial archaeology of the Rhondda is well attested, with sites and remains from most periods surviving on the ridges between the valleys. However, it is the relatively recent human explosion into this once tranquil landscape that distinguishes the Rhondda from any other in Wales. The human impact on the landscape was immediate and dramatic. Around the coal workings, new immigrant communities rapidly developed, having names that have become synonymous with the South Wales industry: Maerdy, Ferndale, Tylorstown, Treherbert, Treorchy and Tonypandy. Constrained by the tight topography of the valleys, a new landscape of highly distinctive communities was shoehorned into the limited land available, and included the familiar South Wales valley scenes of colliery head gear, waste tips, coke ovens, and their attendant urban ribbon of human habitation and needs. The tightly packed valley floors, already dominated by the rivers and colliery buildings, were also occupied by sinuous networks of main roads, tramways and railways that reached beyond the narrow confines of the Rhondda. On each side of this corridor of industry and communications, and extending up the valley sides, often at steep gradients, grew the urban ribbon of small distinctive terraced housing, vertically connected by flights of steps and railings, public and municipal buildings, Anglican churches, Nonconformist chapels, cemeteries, breweries and public houses, shops and schools. The scale and density of this development was unprecedented as, for example, by 1905, there were no fewer than 151 Nonconformist chapels with a seating capacity in excess of 85,000 within the Rhondda. Public subscriptions contributed greatly to the cost of these religious and other public buildings which were often built in architecturally distinctive, and sometimes lavishly ornate, styles. St Peter’s Church in the Rhondda Fawr is a fine example, being an architectural landmark known as ‘the Cathedral of the Rhondda’; and as a continuing memorial to the past, Treorchy cemetery in the Rhondda Fach creates its own self-contained but highly distinctive landscape in the area. Without the conventional layout possible on level sites, development in the valleys resulted inevitably in ill-planned communities and severe housing congestion. People lived in cramped, insanitary conditions where outbreaks of cholera and dysentery were frequent, and their lot was made worse by appalling working conditions. As well as the material changes in the landscape, there were labour disputes and mining disasters which had human consequences and left indelible social scars. The environmental consequences of this rapacious need for coal were also enormous, with most of the trees disappearing for fuel and pit props, and the rivers, until recently, running black with pollution. From the 1920s onwards, extensive tracts on the valley sides and on the ridge tops above were planted with coniferous trees to supply pit props to the mines. Even though the coal industry and its supporting trades have all but disappeared — Rhondda’s last pit at Maerdy closed in 1990 — the dense forest plantations remain and the communities live on in a landscape that has survived these many changes. Survival has required economic diversification including the promotion of the valleys’ industrial heritage for tourism. Housed in the refurbished buildings of the Lewis Merthyr Colliery, the Rhondda Heritage Park recreates living and working conditions together with social and cultural aspects of life in industrial Rhondda. The colliery was established in 1870 and by 1900 was one of the largest in Wales, producing a million tons of coal a year. Closed as a working colliery in 1983, the site is one of the most complete groups of colliery buildings remaining in Wales. The Rhondda is therefore a living, though perhaps economically pressured and threatened, historic landscape area. Although the former mining and industrial landscape has been razed, the valley still epitomizes a South Wales mining community, which suddenly and dramatically imposed itself on the area despite the difficult geographic constraints. The valley, with its distinctive people, culture and charm, remains a manifestation of an immigrant labouring society quickly drawn together in a remote pocket of Wales by the lure of the lucrative gains of ‘black gold’.