The Industrial Revolution.
The increasing scarcity of timber for
conversion into charcoal for use in the furnaces caused a serious decline
in the iron industry and in 1740 only two furnaces were still in operation
in Monmouthshire, producing an annual output of 900 tons.
Since the 17th century research had been conducted
into the possibility of substituting coal and coke for wood and charcoal
in iron manufacture; in 1735 Abraham Darby of Coalbrookdale (Salop)
succeeded in coking coal and using it in smelting the iron ore. Henry
Cort discovered how pig iron could be converted into malleable iron
by the use of coal in a puddling furnace and turned into bars by means
of rollers instead of the forge hammers hitherto used.When his patents
were thrown open there was a great development of the iron industry
in Monmouthshire, particularly along the mountainous ridge from Blaenafon
to Hirwaun, where coal and iron ore
were easily obtainable and water power
available to create the necessary blast.
During the minority of Capel Hanbury
Leigh his mother had in 1785 leased the Pontypool works to David Tanner,
a speculator of Monmouth, who now established new coal furnaces at Blaendare
where the cold blast was derived from bellows driven by a water wheel
which was operated by an overflow from the Glyn Ponds. Tanner went bankrupt
in 1799 and fled to the West Indies, whereupon John Barnaby, a native
of Herefordshire, bought the Blaendare furnaces for £10,000. He
sold the works again in 1804 to Capel Hanbury Leigh and concentrated
on coal mining, calling in Edward Martin of Swansea to advise on the
driving of a level. Martin was so impressed with the extent and value
of the Monmouthshire coal field that Barnaby spent £30,000 on
its development. By the year 1809 he was raising over 20,000 tons of
coal annually but making only a very small profit.
The mother of Capel Hanbury Leigh had
been married again in 1788 to Thomas Stoughton, who went into partnership
with his son-in-law in sinking a colliery which produced a thousand
tons a week.
After the failure of David Tanner, control
of Pontypool works was again assumed by Capel Hanbury Leigh. He took
into partnership a Robert Smith and Watkin George who had been engineer
as Cyfarthfa in 1790 when Henry Cort had erected the reverbatory puddling
furnace there. Watkin George proceeded to remodel the Pontypool works;
he demolished the wire works at Pontymoel in 1808 and erected a tin
works there, adding two more at Lower Mill in 1815. At Pontymoel he
built a large water wheel like the one at Cyfarthfa and introduced the
Dandy Fire and the Hollow Fire, both improving the quality of the iron
and increasing the output. It is stated that the result of George's
work at Pontypool was to "reduce the cost and double the production
with the same outlay in machinery."
The pig iron produced at the Blaendare
works or the Old Furnace was carried by pack horses up the track by
Wentsland Cottage, over Birchhill ("The Salutation Inn") and
down the Sow Hill; it then crossed the market place and passed down
Crane Street, from where it went either through the hamlet of Trosnant
to the Park Forge or up George Street and around Twyn-ty-du and Wainfelin
to the old Osbourne Forge. At the Osbourne Forge it was converted into
bars which were finally despatched to the rolling mills at Pontymoel
from where the sheets might be sent to be tinned at the Plating Mill
where the Town Forge was.
After the death of Smith in 1825 the
Pontymoel Tin Works were joined to the Pontypool Iron works under one
management and connected by a tram road along the side of the Afon Llywd,
running form Pontymoel to the Park Forge, and from this part through
a tunnel to the new Town Forge which in 1830 replaced the old Plating
Mill. A few years afterwards it was extended to the Osbourne Forge,
crossing and re-crossing the river by two bridges which were later to
be abolished and the tram road made on the west side of the river. A
tunnel was constructed at the upper end of Cwmynyscoy to connect the
Blaendare furnaces with Pontymoel and finally Sow Hill was pierced by
a tunnel which connected the works at the Glyn with the Osbourne Forge,
so that pack horses were finally dispensed with.
The Park Forge was dismantled in 1833
and the land thrown into the park at the time when Capel Hanbury Leigh
was extending and improving his mansion. At the height of the railway
mania in 1851 when iron rails were in huge demand the Pontypool Iron
Works, collieries and tinplate works, consisting of three blast furnaces
and three tin works, were let to the Staffordshire firm of Messrs. Durmack
and Thompson. They in turn re-let them in 1855 to Messrs. Darby, Brown
and Robinson, who later became the Ebbw Vale Iron Company.
At Abersychan, Messrs. Shears, Small
and Taylor leased land form the Wentsland estate and on this site in
1826 they commenced to build an Ironworks for the manufacture of merchant
bars, the directors claiming that the minerals under the three acres
alone were sufficient to supply four furnaces for a hundred years, consuming
40,000 tons of ironstone and 60,000 tons of coal a year.
A new British Iron Company was formed
in 1829 to take over the Abersychan ironworks; it consisted of between
two and three thousand people who in the main were not local and who
bought shares at £50 each. For the first eleven years no profit
was made.; in 1838 it was £13,926 17s 8d and in 1839 £19,754
0s 5d but it declined in 1840 to £3,292 0s 11d. In that year they
commenced to make iron rails and both rails and bars were manufactured
in various proportions down to 1850 when the making of bars ceased except
for use in the works, and rails became the sole product. The rails were
made from cold blast iron and had the strength and tenacity of the best
merchant bars, equal to steel rails of today. When first manufactured
the average selling price of the rails was £8 15s 0d per ton and
this rose to £10 0s 9d in 1846, but by 1851 had dropped to half
this price. Hot air was first applied to the blast furnaces in 1848
so saving fuel and increasing the make which was now 120 to 130 tons
per furnace weekly.
The losses of the Company continued
to rise; in 1851 they went bankrupt after spending £400,000, and
were taken over in January 1852, by Messrs. Darby and Co. (the Ebbw
Vale Company) for £8,500. The amount paid for the buildings, plant
and machinery, workman's cottages, and stocks of material represented
barely one-fifth of the value of the concern. The stock of ironstone
on the pit banks alone was said to be worth the amount paid for the
whole works. The royalty paid by the British Iron Company to the Wentsland
estate had been about 4s 6d per ton on the make of pig iron, but the
Ebbw Vale Company now agreed to pay 5 1/2 d "per ton on all coal
and ironstone raised and on all foreign ores used."
Iron works were erected at Pentwyn in
1825 by Hunt Bros.; at Pontnewynydd John Lawrence and William Morgan
of
Llanfoist in 1837 set up more furnaces;
in 1845 these were bought by William Williams of Beaufort who had formerly
kept the Company's shop for Crawshay Bailey but now owner of the Golynos
works at Abersychan and living at Snatchwood House. He manufactured
bars and rails but failed when the Mon. and Glamorgan Bank collapsed
in 1851 and W. T. Henley, a London speculator, bought them for conversion
into wire mills. Henley is said to have rolled the Atlantic Cable there,
but they were soon closed down and remained idle for many years. At
Varteg, Kendricks & Co. started five furnaces about 1830 and John
Vipond, a young man from Cheshire sank the Varteg Pits.
The Second Industrial
Revolution.
After the acquisition of the Abersychan
and Pontypool Ironworks the Ebbw Vale Company increased their interest
in the Eastern Valley by taking over the Cwmbran Forge and Mills but
these were soon resold to Messrs. Weston and Grice who remodeled then
for the manufacture of nuts, bolts and fishplates - a business now merged
in the Guest, Keen & Nettlefords combine.
At Abersychan the Company connected
up its various works by constructing railroads which linked up the newly
opened Monmouthshire Railway by means of an incline plane from Talywain
to Twyn-y-frwd, between Varteg and Abersychan. This was operated by
a stationary engine and since working was slow it was eventually replaced
by the High level railway line from Pontypool through Talywain to Brynmawr.
Improvements at the British Ironworks
allowing the utilization of the waste gases and the application of hot
blast to the furnaces raised the weekly output by 1876 to about 250
tons from each furnace. The character of the pig iron produced however
had greatly changed and was unfit for the production of best quality
bar iron so that this trade died out the works concentrated on the manufacture
of iron rails. After the introduction of the Bessemer steel process
in 1864 the demand for steel rails led to the collapse of the trade
in iron rails and the stoppage of many works. The Pontnewynydd works
and the Golynos works, then owned by Crawshay Bailey, closed in 1860.
The Abersychan works closed in 1876 and soon afterwards were completely
dismantled, the buildings, plant and machinery being broken up and sold.
During the era of the ironworks the
production of iron bars and their conversion into tinplate were two
branches of one industry, but after the perfection of the steel making
process tinplate works became separate establishments where the manufacture
started with the rolling of mild steel bars brought from outside firms.
In Pontypool the two tin works at the Lower Mill were converted into
sheet iron mills in 1861 and continued as such until after the 1914-18
War when they became derelict and were finally demolished in 1944. The
tin plate works continued until 1868; in 1871 the Company let them to
Messrs. Josiah Richards, John Jones and David Williams, trading as the
"Pontypool Iron and Tinplate Company." The iron was produced
at the Town Forge for the manufacture of the tinplates; the sheet mills
and tinning department were at Pontymoel until acquired in 1894 by Thomas
Bennett who established a foundry to produce crucible steel and iron
castings for steel works and collieries. When steel had replaced iron
in the production of tin plate about 1884 the Town Forge was converted
into a tin plate works and had since been operated by Messrs. Partridge,
Jones and John Paton Ltd. This firm had started by acquiring the Varteg
Colliery and ironworks in the 1860's and had later bought the Pontnewynydd
works which now specialised in the manufacture of steel sheets for the
car bodies and electrical apparatus.
Greenhill House and the surrounding
land were sold on June 4th 1874, for £2,020 to Sampson Copestake,
a former Lord Mayor of London, who proceeded to erect a new steel works.
He first purchased the Pontypool Road Engineering Works, later called
the Panteg Foundry, form Messrs. Davies and Pratt, and erected a steel
smelting furnace to serve the steelworks that he started to lay down
on adjacent land. The largest casting ever made in Monmouthshire, one
weighing 100-120 tons, was made in his foundry as a foundation block
for No. 1 Hammer. Twelve furnaces, each of ten tons capacity, were erected
to manufacture steel rails and fishplates, most of the work being done
by hand, but the venture was unsuccessful and closed down in 1879. After
three years J. R. Wright and Isaac Butler,
 |
two of the former managers, formed
a new company to take over the foundry and steel works for the purpose
of manufacturing tin bars. Larger furnaces, mechanically charged, were
installed - a charging machine introduced in 1902 was the first of its
kind in Wales.
Tin mills were laid down on the site
adjacent to the steel works, where the present sheet works stand, by
Alfred Baldwin, Ltd, in 1885. Trading relations between the two firms
developed, the bars of the steel works being manufactured into high
class tin plate by the other, and in 1902 the two amalgamated, trading
as Baldwins Ltd. The Pontymoel Lower Mills sheet mills and the Phoenix
Galvanising Works had been acquired from The Ebbw Vale Company by Wright
& Butler, but the work done at these plants was later absorbed by
the
main works.
At the end on the 19th century the McKinley
tariff in the USA was a grievous blow to the tin plate industry, virtually
stopping exports to America and compelling the manufacturers to seek
new markets in Europe and elsewhere.
The depression in the iron industry
that followed the closure of ironworks in the 1870's led the proprietors
to continue to work their collieries and to compete in the coal market.
Here they had an advantage over the old colliery owners who had been
compelled to raise wages to compete for labour with the ironworks when
these were flourishing. The effect of the coal owners to reduce wages
in 1873 led to a great demonstration of colliers in Pontypool attended
by brass bands from Pontymoel, Abercarn and Cwmtillery when they expressed
their determination not to rest until it was made compulsory to pay
wages weekly in current coin without deduction. The coal owners gave
notice expiring on 1st January 1875, to reduce wages by 10%, the third
reduction in six months. A great Strike and Lockout lasting five months
ended only with the miners being compelled to accept a 12 1/2% reduction.
In order to provide work for the unemployed during the depression, John
Capel Hanbury planted the American Gardens at Trevethin.
The price paid for coal was brought
home to the public twice in a fortnight in 1890. Five colliers lost
their lives in the Glyn Pit on the 23rd of January and on the 6th of
February an explosion at the Llanerch pit resulted in the deaths of
176 men.
Coal production in South Wales reached
its peak in 1913 and during World War I, Eastern Valley coal was used
all over the country; the steelworks were in full production and Pontypool
experienced an era of prosperity. Soon after the Armistice however a
depression set in which was accentuated by the General Strike and Miners
Stoppage of 1926. An industrial survey of 1931 showed the necessity
for the introduction of new industries and a Special Areas Act in 1934
placed certain parts of Wales under a Commissioner responsible for their
social and economic development. An interesting experiment was tried
in the Pontypool area when the Eastern Valley Subsistence Scheme with
its headquarters at the Old Brewery, Cwmavon, encouraged the unemployed
in a movement for mutual assistance.
Legislation passed in 1937 permitted
Treasury help in the erection of factories in the Special Areas. Messrs.
Pilkinton Bros. were encouraged to establish a branch of their St. Helens
Glass Works at Pontypool Road; in 1948 it was doubled in extent and
at one stage employed over 600 workers in making glass for buildings
of all types and for motor car and horticultural purposes. The Royal
Ordnance Factory that was established at Glasgoed to fill naval shells
covers two square miles and employs many ex-miners, drawn from all the
valleys of Monmouthshire.
The most important postwar development
had been the establishment at Mamhilad of the new factory of British
Nylon Spinners Ltd, a joint venture of Imperial Chemical Industries
Ltd. and Courtaulds Ltd., which started production in 1948. On a site
of 112 acres amid beautiful laid-out gardens in a rural setting, had
been erected one of the finest of modern industrial buildings. The original
block, with a floor space of one million square feet one of the largest
in Europe to be contained under one roof. Approximately 5,000 people
were employed either directly or indirectly in the production of the
new textile. It was the largest factory in Europe producing nylon yarn.
Ropes and other equipment that accompanied Hilary and Tensing to the
summit of Mount Everest were of nylon; carpets and transmission belts,
tarpaulins and fire hose, are all articles in addition to clothing that
rely on the yarn.
At Pontypool Road Messrs. H. G. Stone
& Co. built a modern factory covering 35,000 square feet and employed
300 people, mostly females, in the production of soft toys and playsuits;
12,000 toys of all shapes and sizes were produced weekly.
An eighty-feet high new Gas Works had
been built an New Inn at a cost of £600,000. It produced 5,294,590
therms of gas annually and replaced the works established at Pontypool
in 1823 and Abersychan in 1857.
These industrial developments were symptomatic
of the revolution that took place in Pontypool. Even before the amalgamation
with Panteg the population was being compelled by the shortage of building
sites in the older parts of the town to move to more level district
lower down the river. Large new housing estates sprang up in these areas
to which industry migrated.
The Iron and Tinplate industries on
which the prosperity of Pontypool was founded have made was for a wide
range of new manufactures which will not be subject to the violent fluctuations
of trade which so typified the older industries. Change has overtaken
even the works that have survived. Panteg Works was taken over by the
nationalised Richard Thomas and Baldwins Company before British Steel.
