The origins of Abercynon

During the dissolution of the monasteries, in Henry V111’s the grange at Mynachdy which was in Llanwynno was run by lay brothers when it  was disbanded it is rumored that one of the lay brothers settled on the side of Darren y Foel, at Ynysferrig, on the banks of the Cynon, This place after numerous changes of name became Abercynon.

                                          Stone plaques St Thomas's Church

These plaques are called the Stations of the Cross which is Jesus last journey through Jerusalem to his crucifixion.

                             The shrine to the Virgin Mary

                             

Many years ago a small community of Irish Miners who lived around Abercynon built a shrine to the Virgin Mary at a place where to rivers met, black with coal washed down from the workings upstream. As they cleaned up the ground and built on it they discovered two springs of clean water.

They hoped with this discovery that they could make the discovery like Lourdes; they built wells and enshrined a statute of the Virgin Mary.

Merthyr Canal (Glamorganshire Canal)

Merthyr Tydfil and the other iron centers on the northern rim of the South Wales coalfield were badly placed with regard to the transport of their products to the ports, initially the pig iron was carried to the coast by packhorses bearing panniers. Roads were eventually built but, while a wagon drawn by four horses could convey two tons of goods, a canal barge was drawn by one horse and could convey twenty-five tons. In the 1800’s, all the main valleys of the South Wales coalfield had been linked to ports by canals. It was the canals that truly launched the coalfields on its spectacular growth in the 1800’s. The canals remained the dominant form of transport until the railways overtook them in the 1840s.

The Abercynon Sixteen Locks

The canal contained 52 locks on the Glamorganshire Canal, there were16 at Abercynon within a space of one mile. The vertical fall from mountain terrace to valley floor was 207ft, almost enough to mark a change of climate. Bill Gomer, a retired boatman, once said, “There were waves there, top of the fives as big as blooming sea.” Thomas Darford with his son, also Thomas, together with Thomas Sheasby, were the engineer-contractors involved in the canal project and work on the Steep Locks appears to have been completed in 1791. At the foot of the locks the canal was taken across the Taff on a single arched aqueduct whence it continued to Cardiff a distance of 25 miles from Cyfarthfa Ironworks at Merthyr.

The Glamorganshire Canal Company called them “The Steep Lock” the close packed groups of five and eleven locks that lowered their was from Merthyr to Cardiff waterway dramatically dropped down the Cefn Glas, a mountain spur lying between Quaker’s Yard and Abercynon some fifteen miles north of Cardiff. The village of Abercynon a South Wales mining community of relatively modern origin stands where the river Taff joined by its tributary the Cynon.

Peculiar land information in the valley of the Taff at Quaker’s Yard was responsible for the heavy lockage at this place where the river loops around a canyon-like horseshoe bend, and the canal builders and later railway engineers were forced to cross over the spur at high level.

History of the Feeder Pipes Bridge

The feeder pipe bridge was built in 1857 and was constructed as part of a feeder canal to provide an improved water supply to the Glamorganshire Canal system from Abercynon to Cardiff. The inadequate water supply is referred to in 1854 when Nixon’s, the Aberdare Canal coal freighters, complained of delays. “The Lock keepers grappled day and night with too many boats and shortages of water”. The lock being referred to are Thomas Dadford’s Abercynon “sixteen” which rose as astonishing 207 feet within a mile of the Canal basin towards the iron and coal town of Aberdare and Merthyr.

At Fiddler’s elbow a weir was constructed and the water diverted when required into the feeder canal this was constructed across the River Taff ¾ mile upstream from the basin. The feeder canal ran along the west bank of the river to the feeder bridge. At this point it crossed the River Taff and continued along the east bank below Trevithick’s railway line. It then joined the Glamorganshire Canal at the basin where at this point the canal is some thirty feet above river level.

The Navigation House

The Navigation Public House was once the head office of the Glamorganshire Canal and at one stage the largest Iron exchange in the world was run from this building. The area around the Navigation Public House is known as the basin this is where they maintained the canal boats. The feeder pipe bridge was built in 1857 and was constructed as part of a feeder canal to provide an improved water supply to the Glamorganshire Canal system from Abercynon to Cardiff.

                                   

                                                 Plaque to Richard Trevithick

History of Richard Trevithick’s Train

In 1803 Samuel Homfray, the owner of the Penydarren Ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil, employed Richard Trevithick to provide a train from his ironworks in Merthyr to the main canal at Abercynon. In February 1804 the Penydarren locomotive was ready for its first trip, it managed to haul ten tons of iron, seventy passengers and five wagons from Merthyr to Abercynon it ran of speeds of up to 5 miles per hour. It was the first steam engine to run on iron tracks. It only made three journeys, the reason for this that the cast iron rails kept on breaking.

Taff Vale Railway

In the 1830s the Dowlais Ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil was the largest in the world. Josiah Guest, who owned one of the ironworks, realized that it would be an advantage to link his ironworks with Cardiff docks. Guest joined forces with Anthony Hill and other owners of ironworks in the Merthyr area to create the Taff Vale Railway Company, Isambard Brunel, a talented engineer from Bristol, were recruited to build the railway. When the rail network was completed it reduced the costs of moving the coal and iron out of the valleys so it was possible to export the coal to different countries of the world through the ports of Cardiff and Barry.

Carnetown/ Abercynon

The Stradling Family ounce owned Carnetown from Nash Street down as far as the river Clydach; the family came from St Donat’s Castle. They claimed that they were the descendants of the Norman Lord William le Esterling who was amongst Fitzhamon retinue in the 11th century who fought in the Cynon Valley.

Bronze Age Find

The first known artifact to be found in Abercynon was a bronze socketed axe head which was found in 1874 near the present Abercynon Station which is now in the museum in Cardiff.

In 1981 a sword fragment was found on Ynysboeth Mountain dating back to the Bronze Age. It is on display in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.

Folklore

It is said that a young boy was rescued from drowning in the river at Abercynon by a woman in white.