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The Iron Industry in Maesteg

1800-1885

David Lewis

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The Iron Industry in Maesteg

Preface. Since the publication of ‘A Cambrian Adventure,’ a History of the Iron Industry in Maesteg, in 2001, further research has uncovered new material which helps build a more complete picture of this significant pocket of iron production. The additional material has been conveniently included in this reference edition. The newly-included information has been gleaned from a surprisingly wide range of sources including The Barbados Museum and Historical Association, The William Wordsworth Trust at Grasmere, and The Institution of Civil Engineers in London, as well more local sources such as the recently-completed online catalogue of The Neath Antiquarian Society archives. The new material relates to the beginnings of the Maesteg Works, and its development in the 1830s, and throws some new light on the personalities who prompted the expansion of the Llynfi Works and the consequent development of Maesteg. There is also some new material regarding production details at the Llynfi Works and the markets served by the Llynfi iron companies. Also, the reasons for the liquidation of the Llynfi, Tondu and Ogmore Company in 1878 are outlined. However there are still significant gaps in the record, particularly in the early 1840s, a pivotal time for the Llynfi Works and the history of the Maesteg district.

David Lewis September, 2012.

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The Iron Industry in Maesteg

Contents

1.The South Wales Iron Industry…………...4 2.The Maesteg Ironworks (The Old Works)……7 3.The Early Years of the Llynfi Ironworks (The New Works)..26

4. The Llynvi Iron Company and Dr. John Bowring……34 5. The Llynvi Vale Iron Company and William Mitcalfe….46 6. Years of Rapid Change: 1861-69………….60 7. The Final years of ‘Boom and Bust’: 1869-85………71 The Maesteg Iron Industry, an Illustrated Outline……87 The Four Local Ironworks: Site Details……………….102 Sources of Information……………..103 Index……………………………………..106

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1.The South Wales Iron Industry.

Of the developments that allowed the Industrial Revolution to gain momentum in the century after 1750, the production of relatively cheap, mass-produced iron was one of the most important. In the first half of the eighteenth century, iron was mainly produced in small charcoal-burning blast furnaces. They were located in areas where there was a supply of ore, available water to power the furnace bellows, and timber for fuel. The small amount of iron produced was sufficient only for farm implements, cooking utensils, hand weapons and primitive artillery pieces; the hardware required by a pre-industrial society.

Production of iron on an industrial scale first became possible in the 1750s when Abraham Darby’s replacement of charcoal by coal (coke) in the blast furnace increased the output of iron dramatically. Darby had first used coke in 1709 at Coalbrookdale in the West Midlands; it took fifty years or so for the technique to be developed and applied on a fairly large scale. Coal was an efficient fuel for reducing iron ore and was more readily available than charcoal. Larger furnaces could be built as coal, in the form of coke, could support the weight of a much larger charge of ironstone and limestone inside the firebrick core of the blast furnace. Coke-fired blast furnace locations, however, were still anchored to sites with waterpower. This prevented the development of large groups of furnaces at one site, due to the limitations of water supply.

By the 1760s, therefore, iron making had moved to the coalfields, or, more precisely, to particular coal producing areas. Such areas had available waterpower, relatively easy-to-mine coal and iron ore, and the coal had to be suited to the coking process. The coal bearing rocks also yielded the fireclay that was required for the production of bricks used for lining the blast furnaces and iron ore kilns. Limestone, used as a furnace flux, was usually close at hand. These elements were all available around Coalbrookdale and the West Midlands, but it was quickly discovered that parts of the South Wales Coalfield seemed ideally placed to make profits for ambitious entrepreneurs. The greatest returns were to be derived from the

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supply of munitions, and both the Seven Years War (1756-63) and the American War of Independence (1775-1783) created a large market for iron. Entrepreneurs, seeking to meet this demand, were drawn to the north eastern rim of the South Wales Coalfield where the geological conditions, and the availability of waterpower, promised low production costs and large profits. The north outcrop of the coalfield, from Hirwaun in the west to Blaenavon in the east, thus became a major area of iron production by the end of the eighteenth century, with the greatest concentration of iron making in Merthyr Tydfil.

By 1800 it was possible to produce wrought (worked) iron on quite a large scale by the slow, laborious puddling process, a method invented in the 1780s by Henry Cort in Hampshire and developed in Merthyr Tydfil. Pig iron, produced directly from the blast furnace, has a high level of carbon and has few applications as it is brittle. Some types of pig iron, with the higher levels of carbon, are free flowing but relatively soft and brittle and are thus suitable for casting in a foundry. Other types of pig iron with the lower levels of carbon, for example ‘white pig iron,’ are durable but difficult to cast and formed the raw material for the puddling process in a forge. After heating in a refinery to remove more carbon, this forge pig iron was further processed in a puddling furnace. When heated and stirred in such a furnace, refined forge pig iron slowly loses most of its impurities; it has very low amounts of carbon and is malleable and durable. It thus becomes strong, corrosion-resistant, wrought iron, which can be hammered or rolled into a variety of shapes for a range of uses. The wrought iron, having passed through the blast furnace, the refinery and the puddling furnace was then termed ‘bar iron’, the product that dominated the iron trade in the nineteenth century. As well as changes in iron making technology, the end of the eighteenth century saw the development of efficient steam-powered beam engines, a technological advance that eliminated the need to locate at sites with waterpower. For the first time, groups of furnaces could be located around a coal-fired blast engine house. As a result, ironworks were much larger and ironmasters had more location choices within the coalfields.

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Despite the favourable geological conditions, the early works on the north crop were at a disadvantage as they were distant from the markets for iron and far from the coast. As the iron industry developed, horse-drawn railways were laid down to serve the works, then the Glamorgan Canal was opened in 1794 connecting the Merthyr area to the coast at Cardiff. The mineral resources and the canal link ensured Merthyr Tydfil’s position as the world’s largest iron making centre in the early nineteenth century.

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2. The Maesteg Ironworks (The Old Works).

Although the north crop of the South Wales Coalfield dominated the Welsh iron trade in the nineteenth century, there was a significant concentration of production in the central anticlinal belt that included Cwmavon and the Llynfi Valley. During the period 1845-76, Maesteg, the main settlement in the Llynfi Valley, became a major centre of the iron industry. In 1847 there were eight furnaces in blast in the Maesteg district and, in the early 1870s, the Llynfi site was ranked with the larger integrated ironworks in South Wales. Despite its location in the centre of the coal basin, geological processes had endowed the Llynfi Valley with considerable reserves of easily accessible coking coal and iron ore. Many of the coal seams and iron ore deposits that outcropped along the north crop were also exposed, or near the surface, in the Maesteg district. The exposures were the result of an anticline (or upfold) in the coal measures. Coal and iron ore outcropped spectacularly forming a horseshoe shape, open to the north and north west, around what is now the town centre of Maesteg. The story of iron making in the Maesteg district begins on the eastern slopes of the Llynfi Valley, on the farms of Llwyni and Brynrhyg, in the early 1770s. In 1772 John Bedford entered into an agreement with Llewellyn David of Llwyni for the supply of coal and ironstone for the blast furnace he was planning at Cefn Cribwr, about eight miles away. During the 1770s the British iron industry was in its infancy and Bedford, who had come to South Wales from the West Midlands, was one of its pioneers. Although his furnace was in operation for a short period in the 1780s, John Bedford's attempt to establish a coal-fired ironworks at Cefn Cribwr was unsuccessful. Almost thirty years after Bedford’s agreement with Llewellyn David, entrepreneurs from Abergavenny began to take an interest in the mineral wealth of the Llynfi district. In August 1799, a preliminary agreement was drawn up between Llewellyn David and ‘William Barrow & Co.’ of Abergavenny regarding the mineral resources of Llwyni Farm. Although there were two ‘William

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Barrows’ in the Abergavenny district at the end of the eighteenth century, and both had links with the iron trade, this partnership was led by William Barrow of the Sirhowy Ironworks in Monmouthshire. Apparently, Barrow did not take up the option to lease a mineral estate at Llwyni and perhaps it was not just coincidence that two and a half years after the agreement between Llewellyn David and Barrow & Co., Thomas Jones, also of Abergavenny, attempted to set up coal and iron ore workings on the Llwyni property. Jones, who was variously described as a leather merchant, currier or tanner would become a key figure in the early history of the Llynfi Valley. He took out a lease, with an annual surface rent of £63, in March 1802 and it is probable that Thomas Jones had been a partner in ‘Barrow & Co’ before taking up the initiative from William Barrow in 1802. There was certainly a strong link between Barrow and Jones as both were partners in Hawkins, Harrison & Company, freight agents on the Monmouthshire Canal, in 1796. A Deed of Partnership at the National Library of Wales lists ‘Thomas Jones, tanner of Abergavenny,’ and William Barrow as each holding a one seventh share (£300) in Hawkins, Harrison & Company. Thomas Jones’s venture in the Llynfi Valley was unsuccessful, however, as he lacked the capital to effectively exploit the mineral resources and improve communications. More than twenty years later, in 1824, when demand for iron was increasing, Thomas Jones renewed his interest in the valley. In that year, twelve new blast furnaces were erected in South Wales, a 16% increase on the total number existing in 1823. The expansion was a response to the rising price of iron which peaked in 1825. Dramatic price fluctuations were a feature of the industry and resulted in a pattern of ‘boom and bust’ that lasted until the last quarter of the nineteenth century when iron making finally gave way to steel production. When prices were high, banks, entrepreneurs and private investors were keen to take the opportunity to make large profits. For example, prices increased 55% during 1824-5 bringing considerable returns to iron company shareholders. The very real risk of overproduction and the consequent collapse of prices and profits, were not considered in the rush to invest.

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It was in this period of increasing prices for iron that Thomas Jones sought the capital and the partners to realise the wealth-making potential of the Llynfi Valley. However, before any agreements could be finalised, Thomas Jones died and the initiative was taken up by his brother, Charles. Charles Jones then formed a partnership formally known as the Maesteg Iron and Coal Company, (although it was usually referred to as the Maesteg Company), with the intention of building an ironworks with two blast furnaces in the Llynfi Valley. The company name was taken from Maesteg Uchaf Farm, part of the mineral estate leased by the entrepreneurs. It was soon adopted as the name of the township that grew up around the ironworks. The farm, adjoining the Llwyni property on lower land to the south west, contained considerable reserves of iron ore and coking coal on and near the surface. The lease for Maesteg Uchaf, which included an annual surface rent of £120, was dated 24 March 1826, a date that marks the beginning of the industrial and urban development of the Llynfi Valley. From Deeds of Co-Partnership in the Neath Antiquarian Society’s Collections, the Jones brothers’ quest for capital had taken them to the City of London and to Basinghall Street near the Guildhall in particular. In a deed dated 24 March 1826, the same date as the Maesteg Uchaf lease, the original seven partners in the new iron company are listed. They were: James Bicheno, Furnival’s Inn, London; William Henry Buckland of Reading; Henry Cooper, cloth broker of Sambrook Court, Basinghall St. London; John Millard Dunn, wool broker of Hackney and Sambrook Court; William Webb Dunn also a wool broker of Hackney and Sambrook Court; Charles Jones of Abergavenny, and Henry Fussell of Corsely, Warminster. Sambrook Court, where three of the seven were based, was an important centre for the London wool trade in the 1820s. W.H. Buckland and, to a lesser extent, James Bicheno would play significant roles in the development of central Glamorgan in the years that followed. Both investors moved to South Wales after the establishment of the ironworks; W.H. Buckland lived at the company-owned Plasnewydd House near the works from about 1831 to 1836, and James Bicheno lived at South Cornelly. Of the group of

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English investors, only Henry Fussell seems to have had any links with the iron trade, he had family connections with the Mells Ironworks near Frome in Somerset. From the deed, the initial capital of the company was £24,000 and Charles Jones held a one-quarter share, with a one-eighth share for each of the other six partners. Shortly after the formation of the Maesteg Company, probably in July 1826, Charles Jones died and yet another brother, William Jones, joined the partnership in September of that year. At the same time Thomas Motley, a wealthy wool trader of Osmondthorp House, Leeds, replaced William Dunn as a shareholder. At about the same time as the Jones brothers were recruiting their partners in the iron trade, a company was formed to open a horse-drawn railway from the upper Llynfi Valley to a coastal inlet at Porth Cawl, fifteen miles away. A harbour and wharfage were to be constructed at the coastal site. Previous attempts to develop the mineral resources of the valley had been unsuccessful because of poor transport links with the rest of South Wales. In 1825, thirty years after the Glamorganshire Canal, the Monmouthshire Canal and a network of tramroads had transformed the iron industry on the north crop, small-scale coal producers in the Llynfi Valley still relied on pack-horses and farm carts to transport materials. The new horse railway to the coast would soon allow the considerable natural resources of the Llynfi Valley to be developed on an industrial scale for the first time. Although the new company, The Dyffryn Llynvi and Porth Cawl Railway Co. (DLPR) was promoted by country landowners, clerics and industrialists, mainly from South Wales, a number of the Maesteg partners formed a significant group of English shareholders in the new railway company. James Bicheno, Henry Fussell, W.H. Buckland, Henry Cooper and John Dunn all held major shareholdings in the DLPR. In 1825, at the height of a boom in the iron trade, the railway company was established by Act of Parliament. By 1828, the first blast furnace had been blown in and the railway and the port were in operation.

During the early 1830s Robert Smith, of the Margam Tinworks, established links with the Maesteg venture, and then joined the

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company as a major partner. A well-established South Wales entrepreneur, Robert Smith had been a tinplate manufacturer in Carmarthen before opening the Margam Tinplate Works in 1823. The important link between the Maesteg and Margam works appears to have been established during 1831. In that year, for example, both enterprises (Smith & Co. and the Maesteg Company), placed an advertisement in The Cambrian for two ships, on annual contract, to transport ‘regular cargoes’ of iron, tinplate and coal to ports in England and Ireland. From the notice the two companies wanted to charter two vessels, each of sixty to a hundred tons, to export their products from Aberavon, Porthcawl and Neath.

In connection with that export trade, an Agreement was drawn up on 24 December 1831 between the Maesteg Company and the Briton Ferry Estate regarding a lease for wharfage at Briton Ferry. The document includes the names of the Maesteg partners plus Robert Smith, and the same names appear on a Deed of Co-Partnership of the Maesteg Company dated November 1 1833. From the deed, John Dunn, who was declared bankrupt in July 1829, had left the venture and James Munn Buckland of Furnival’s Inn, London, Joseph Stancombe of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, and Robert Smith were listed as additional partners. J.M. Buckland was William Henry Buckland’s brother, and Joseph Stancombe was an associate of the Bucklands

During the early 1830s Smith played an increasingly important role in the affairs of the Maesteg Company, and his sons, Robert and David, were also involved in the management of the ironworks. By 1834 the members of the Management Committee of the DLPR were complaining in their annual report to shareholders that the railway was losing a great deal of revenue due to the link between the Maesteg and Margam works. For a number of years the iron produced at Maesteg had been carried to Porthcawl by the DLPR and exported via the company’s harbour. During 1833-4, however, much of the Maesteg iron was off-loaded at Tydraw, Pyle, four miles from the port, and carried to the Margam tinworks by road.

Some of Robert Smith’s letters, included in the Aberpergwm Collection at the National Library of Wales, contain informative

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references to his fellow investors in the Maesteg venture and allow a glimpse of affairs at the Maesteg Works in the mid 1830s. From the letters, written by Smith to his brother Thomas Smith of Llantrisant, the partnership was not a happy one. Tensions among the major partners resulted in the emergence of two factions within the company. On the one hand Robert Smith seems to have been the key player supported by Thomas Motley and Henry Fussell, in the rival group were the Buckland brothers, William and James, along with Joseph Stancombe.

In a letter of July 1835 Robert Smith also refers to the retirement of William Jones from the partnership in 1834. Smith states that ‘Mr Jones of Llwyni had never advanced any money into the concern, [he] held his share by arrangement in consequence of his having the lease of Llwyni etc. to offer the Company.’ This comment is of some interest as it seems to confirm that the Jones brothers simply bought-up the leases in the district to bargain with, and were not investors in the Maesteg enterprise. Smith also explains in the letter that William Jones’ ‘present income arises from the profits he has in the leases.’ The note is also of interest as it seems to contradict the information included in the deed of March 1826, referred to above, which stated that the Jones brothers held a quarter share in the Maesteg Company. On the face of it, from the limited amount of evidence available, it is possible that the £24,000 initial capital of the company was derived from six of the original partners, and the seventh partner, Charles Jones, had negotiated his quarter share, ‘by arrangement’, in exchange for the leases.

Tensions within the Maesteg partnership increased further when Joseph Rusher, an associate of the Bucklands, joined the company in 1834 or 1835, and in a letter of April 1836 Robert Smith complains bitterly about ‘those consummate unblushing scoundrels the Bucklands and their friends.’ In the same letter Smith states that James Munn Buckland was ‘turned out of our concern’ in September 1835, at a time when J.M. Buckland was also accused of mismanagement during his period as secretary of the DLPR.

It appears that Robert Smith retained control of the venture as, from a notice in the London Gazette, William Henry Buckland,

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Stancombe and Rusher left the partnership in September 1836. At about the same time W.H. Buckland left Maesteg and settled in Cadoxton, Neath. It was there that he established the Vale of Neath Brewery along with Stancombe and Rusher in 1838. After Robert Smith’s death in 1840, Thomas Motley and Henry Fussell took-up the leadership of the enterprise.

In summary, according to the records of the DLPR at the Public Record Office, the Maesteg Ironworks was operated by the Maesteg Company from 1827-35, and by Robert Smith & Co., owners of the Margam Tinworks, from August 1835 to August 1841. From 1841 to 1843 two of the original investors in the Maesteg Company, Thomas Motley and Henry Fussell, were the principal partners. During those three years, the Maesteg and Margam ventures traded as Motley, Fussell & Company. Thus from 1835 to 1843 (and probably earlier) the ironworks was part of an integrated operation with the Maesteg site producing pig iron for further processing at Margam Tinworks.

As regards the progress of iron-making at the Maesteg works, by the late 1820s the iron trade had slipped into recession. In 1828 prices had fallen by 40% from the 1825 peak and had dropped still further by 1830. Critics in the press at the time blamed overproduction and over-optimism for the problems of the iron trade, but the cycle would be repeated again and again. In 1830 the single blast furnace at the works produced 2,430 tons of pig iron, which was about the average furnace output in South Wales at that time. Surprisingly, in a trade recession, a second blast furnace was under construction in 1830, one of only two new furnaces in South Wales that year. Thirty-three blast furnaces had been built in the years 1824-6, but only eight were constructed in South Wales in the years 1827-30, and two of those were at the Maesteg Works. It is probable that the coal and iron ore adjacent to the works allowed the company to assemble raw materials for very low cost at the furnaces. As a result, low production costs could have enabled the enterprise to develop at a time of low prices for iron.

During the 1830s the enterprise seems to have prospered with both furnaces in blast. From the limited amount of evidence available, the emphasis at the works during the early 1830s seems to

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have been on the production of pig iron and castings for export. In March 1833, for example, a report in The Cambrian from ‘a Correspondent who resides near the Maesteg Iron Works, Margam,’ included the following:

The quantity of iron (pig) that has been exported from this place

during the last year, to the coast of France alone, exceeds seven thousand tons, and large orders for castings, gas pipes, &c., have been executed for different parts of England and Ireland.

A rare reference to the castings turned out by the Maesteg Works

exists as a brief note in the records of the Nynehead Estate near Wellington, Somerset: ‘Maesteg Iron Works 13th Sept: 1832. Pipes of cast iron from 3 inches - £6 per ton. 400 pipes 6 feet long each 2 inches diameter weigh 8 tons 19cwt 0[lb] = 50lb each value 2s/8d.’ Unfortunately there was no explanatory note with this brief entry in the Account Book of the Nynehead Estate. In addition to the manufacture of pig iron and cast-iron goods, there is some local evidence that the works could also produce heavy castings for structural ironwork. An iron road bridge, still in place near the centre of Maesteg, was cast at the works in 1835 and, in 1836, the works provided the cast-iron pillars for the new Bridgend Market.

It is probable that the bulk of the iron ore used in the two blast furnaces during the 1830s was supplied from local sources. There is, however, some evidence that the Maesteg Company was looking for alternative sources of ore in the early 1830s. Letters in the author’s possession dated October 1835 refer to a mineral estate leased by the owners of the Maesteg Works at Wootton Courtenay near the port of Minehead in west Somerset. The letters were written by Charles Bailey, the land agent of Lord Sherborne’s estate which included the village of Wootton Courtenay, and they refer to the ‘Maesteg Lease’ and the ‘Maesteg Premises’ on land near the village.

In October 1835 Bailey seems to have discovered new reserves of iron ore on land adjoining the Maesteg mineral estate. One of his letters includes a note that: ‘the quality of the ore which we have

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discovered is full as rich if not richer than that leased to the Maesteg Co. and I have understood that to be 50 to 70 per cent.’ From the letters it is evident that some of the Wootton ore had been used (or sampled) at the Maesteg Works, but it is unlikely that any significant quantity of the ‘ore leased to the Maesteg Co.’ was ever mined and shipped to the Llynfi Valley.

Shortly after the discovery of the new ore, in 1835, the Merthyr ironmaster Richard Crawshay of Cyfarthfa leased the land adjoining the Maesteg mineral estate at Brockwell (near Wootton Courtenay), and mined the haematite ore from surface workings during the late 1830s. Crawshay’s mining operation was probably on a small scale as his ‘iron pits’ were not linked by rail to the port of Minehead six miles away. The ore was transported to the harbour by pack-horses and farm carts. Although the Maesteg Company held leases in the area, Crawshay’s excavation seems to have been the only mining development in the district. The Tithe Map and early Ordnance Survey maps of the Wootton Courtenay district show the ‘iron pits’ worked by Crawshay at Brockwell, but no other iron mines are shown and there are no signs in the landscape of any other mineral workings.

The close links between the Maesteg Works and the tinworks at Margam were outlined in a report on the two works compiled by an eminent pioneer of the British iron industry, David Mushet. The report, dated May 1840, is included in the Mushet Correspondence at the Gloucestershire Record Office and gives a rare insight into the operation of the Maesteg Works in the period May 1836 to March 1840. During those four years the two blast furnaces produced an average of 6,997 tons of pig iron p.a., with an average weekly output of 68 tons per furnace. Of the pig iron produced, it was noted in the report that ‘a considerable proportion was No.1 and No.2 Foundry Iron,’ and that ‘a large proportion of the Pig Iron made at Maesteg is sent to the Margam Iron and Tinplate Works at the cost price of production.’

Mushet’s survey of the works emphasised the advantages of the low rents and royalties paid to the landowners of the Maesteg property. As the mineral leases were long-term and had been drawn-

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up in the period 1802 to 1826, royalties of only 6d. per ton for coal and 6d. per ton for iron ore were paid to the landowners, about half the usual rates paid at that time. As a result, it was estimated that the favourable leasing arrangements gave ‘an advantage of 3/6d. per ton [5%] at the least, over the iron made at works now coming into operation under modern Rents and Royalties.’

The report included an estimate that there was sufficient coal and ironstone on the property to manufacture at least 20,000 tons of pig iron per year for the term of the lease, almost three times the annual output during the late 1830s. Such a relatively large local mineral reserve, along with the low rents and royalties, suggest that the works did not have to rely on imported iron ore.

The report also included information regarding the profitability of the Company Shop during the years 1836-40. The average annual profit from the shop during those four years was £1,100-18-11d, about 20% of the average annual profit estimated for the works.

At the time of the Mushet survey, in May 1840, there was evidently still an element of optimism in the iron trade as it was proposed in the report that a major programme of expansion should be carried through at the Maesteg Works. The ambitious proposals included the construction of three new blast furnaces with an additional blast engine. It was estimated that the three new furnaces would produce an additional 10,000 tons of pig iron p.a.. It was also suggested in the survey that a forge and mill capable of producing 10,000 tons of bar iron annually should be built on the site. However, a rider to the report recommended that the proposed expansion at Maesteg should be carried through in stages due to the large sum of £44,000 required to complete the work. It was thus proposed that, initially, ‘it would be wiser and more economical to erect promptly the Blast Engine and one additional furnace for which the coal and mine openings in their present state could easily be made applicable.’ It was also suggested that later, when profits accrued from the extra production of pig iron, the two extra furnaces and the forge and mill could be completed.

Although Mushet, in his report, referred to ‘the small scale on which the Establishment has been formed,’ by the early 1840s the

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Maesteg Ironworks, or ‘The Old Works’ as it became known after 1839, was a major employer of over 500 workers. In the Report of The Royal Commission on the Employment of Children and Young Persons, published in 1842 and compiled in the previous year, the workforce at the iron works, the nearby collieries and ore workings is listed as 561. The total included forty-seven females and nineteen children under the age of thirteen. In addition to their workforce in Maesteg, Motley & Fussell employed 396 at their tinworks in Margam.

The report of the Royal Commission also gives some indication of working conditions at the Maesteg Works in the early 1840s. The Commissioner, Rhys William Jones, observed that the proportion of women employed in the Llynfi Valley iron industry was much lower than in the older works of the north crop. Charles Hampton, the works’ manager, informed the Commissioner that, ‘we do not employ females underground but several are employed in discharging the trams, filling trams, stacking mine [iron ore], filling mine &c., on the surface.’ Some of the children employed at the works carried out similar tasks. Hampton also reported that two boys helped the moulders and six were employed as strikers for the smiths at the works. Only two boys worked underground, ‘attending [ventilation] doors and flues.’ The working day at the works varied from eight hours to ten and a half hours and, although the rest of the works was closed on Sunday, the blast furnaces were in operation seven days a week. As an experiment, with a view to Sunday closure, Charles Hampton had ‘suspended the working of the furnaces for about eight or ten hours,’ but found that the furnaces did not work well ‘for the following two or three turns,’ hence the continuous iron-making operation. When the report of the Royal Commission was published, in 1842, there was another slump in the iron trade and only one furnace was in blast at the Maesteg Works. During the period 1840-2 firstly Robert Smith & Co. and then Motley, Fussell and Co. were in financial difficulties. By May 1843 however, despite the trade depression, there was an element of optimism in the district and the Maesteg Works seems to have been in profit. Because of the change

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in the fortunes of the iron company, it was decided at a meeting of the management committee of the DLPR to grant Charles Hampton a two-year ‘extension of time for the payment of an amount to the railway company.’

The optimism was due to a development in 1843 that opened a new chapter in the history of the Llynfi district. During the early part of that year, extensive deposits of black-band ironstone were discovered above the main coal outcrops on both sides of the valley. The ore was first discovered in Scotland, in 1801, by David Mushet who was responsible for the report on the Maesteg Works referred to above. His discovery transformed the Scottish iron industry as the availability of the ore ensured the production of good quality iron at low cost. In 1842 Mushet, then living in the Forest of Dean, discovered the ore in Monmouthshire, and confirmed its presence in the Llynfi Valley when Charles Hampton, of the Maesteg Works, sent him local specimens for analysis early in 1843. It was also found near Cwmavon along the westward extension of the Maesteg Anticline. Mushet recalled the characteristics of the local Upper and Lower Black-band in 1847 thus:

I think that one bed is… black compact and clean, the other

mixed with shale…the thickness, viz., 14 and 16 inches, being nearly alike to the Scotch, though when roasted, the yield in iron is less. ……The neighbourhood now referred to [Maesteg/Cwmavon] is soon likely to become a flourishing department of the iron trade, as the extent of Black-band is great, and the supply of coal fully in proportion.

The discovery of the ore transformed the iron industry in the Maesteg district and gave the Llynfi Valley a comparative advantage in the South Wales iron trade that was probably a major reason for the survival of iron making in the district into the 1880s. The second blast furnace was blown-in at the works during 1843 and, in press notices during 1843-4, a number of references were made to the black-band and how it enabled the Maesteg Works to make a profit when iron prices were low.

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The Maesteg and Margam works were put up for sale in January 1843, and the integrated operation at the two sites came to an end in July of that year when the Margam tinworks was purchased as a separate concern by William Llewellyn of Aberdulais. The Maesteg Works remained on the market until May 1844 when it was purchased for £25,000 by a new partnership that traded as The Maesteg Iron Company. Such was the volatile nature of the iron trade that the report on the works, compiled just four years earlier in 1840, had valued the Maesteg property at £69,955. The partners in the new venture included the familiar names of William Henry Buckland and Joseph Rusher together with the eminent engineer William Brunton of Neath and a group of entrepreneurs from Bath. The latter group consisted of William Stothert, who was possibly a member of the well-known Stothert family of West Country iron founders, George Wood, John White Little and a Bath surgeon, John Cottle Spender.

As ‘railway mania’ took hold in 1845 and 1846 and iron prices rose sharply, the first stage of the planned expansion for the site, as outlined in Mushet’s report on the works, was carried through. A new blast engine was installed and a third blast furnace was blown in, probably during 1845.

During the period 1845-48, as in previous years, the production of pig iron was the main activity at the site. For example in August 1847, stocks of Maesteg pig iron were recorded at the Neath Abbey Iron Works. At that works the iron was further processed and used in the manufacture of the railway locomotives, iron ships and steam engines produced by the Neath Abbey company. At about the same time Maesteg iron was supplied to Summers, Day and Baldock, locomotive builders and marine engine manufacturers of Southampton. Another buyer of Maesteg iron was the Dowlais Iron Company in Merthyr. In February 1847, for example, 300 tons of pig iron were hauled to Porthcawl along the horse-drawn DLPR, carried by ship to Cardiff and off-loaded into the wagons of the Taff Vale Railway, or into barges on the Glamorgan Canal, for the journey to Dowlais.

The production of castings from the foundry at the Maesteg

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Works was also important. The foundry had been enlarged by the new company and, during 1845-7, the works specialised in the production of railway chairs, the castings that held sections of rail to the sleepers. About 25% of blast furnace output was probably refined and cast as railway chairs in 1847. Earlier, in January 1845, the Maesteg Iron Company had gained the contract to supply 1,000 tons of cast-iron rails to the nearby Dyffryn Llynvi and Porthcawl Railway at ‘£4.14.6 per ton, delivered.’ Each rail was 4½ft. long, and the combined rail and chair was skilfully made from one casting. During the two-year period 1846-7 total output from the three blast furnaces was about 26,000 tons of pig iron.

Although the iron trade was flourishing, the mid eighteen-forties were disastrous years for the Maesteg Iron Company due to its association with the Vale of Neath Brewery. The brewery, the largest in South Wales at the time, was opened by W.H. Buckland and others in 1838. The Vale of Neath enterprise was in financial difficulties by 1844 and, in January 1845, the brewery venture was re-formed as Stancombe, Buckland, Marriot & Company. At the same time, the new Maesteg Iron Company began trading, and its board of directors included the partners in the brewery company. On the face of it, the future of iron making seemed assured. There was a plentiful supply of black-band and other locally produced ores, raw materials could be cheaply assembled at the blast furnaces, iron prices were high and profits reached a substantial £12,000 p.a.. However, in early April 1848, the Maesteg Works closed down with almost 500 job losses, and the iron company was declared bankrupt later in the month.

In the sessions of the Bristol District Court of Bankruptcy in May and October 1848, the reasons for the closure of such a promising enterprise were fully explained. A downturn in the iron trade in 1847 was a contributory cause, but the works closed because of the link with the ailing brewery company which was bankrupt by September 1847. The iron company had incurred considerable losses as large sums had been advanced to the brewery without hope of repayment. For example, W. H. Buckland had transferred £42,000 from the iron company to the brewery enterprise without consulting

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his fellow directors. Other debts were incurred by the iron company as it bought iron from other works on credit and sold it on for cash; the cash was then passed on, and lost, to the brewery. The debts accumulated by this controversial ‘trading’ in iron and the direct cash advances to the brewery were largely responsible for the failure of the Maesteg Iron Company. Because of the rather controversial trading methods employed by the iron company, the bankruptcy proceedings attracted the attention of the national press in October 1848.

The Maesteg Ironworks was put up for sale by the receiver in October 1848. The sale notices in The Cambrian newspaper describe the capacity of the works as 15,000 tons of pig iron p.a., 120 tons per week could be converted into refined metal and seventy tons per week into railway chairs. The Sale Catalogue refers to nineteen company-owned cottages, and two ‘capital dwellings’, presumably Plasnewydd and Glan Llynfi House. The catalogue also lists the acreages of the extensive black-band beds, all within a mile of the furnaces on Tor Cerrig, Brynrhyg and Maesteg Isaf farms.

The works was reopened in 1852 by a diverse group of entrepreneurs led by Richard Parker Lemon, a Bath wine merchant and share-broker. The new enterprise traded as R.P.Lemon & Company. As was the case with the previous owners of the works, the Maesteg Iron Company, a number of the key investors in the new venture were based in the West Country, although there were two important local mid-Glamorgan shareholders. A major partner in the new enterprise was Thomas Plummer Dunn, a wool merchant of Woodchester near Stroud, and William Davies a general merchant of Bridgend, and James Dunn, a Maesteg grocer, were significant shareholders. The ubiquitous W. H. Buckland was again an influential partner. After the failure of his enterprises in Neath and Maesteg, he was living in Norfolk Buildings, Bath, with his wife, Maria, and their three young children at the time of the 1851 Census; his profession was listed as ‘Accountant.’ It is possible that he prompted the formation of the new partnership from among wealthy merchants of Bath and Gloucestershire. After Lemon’s death in November 1857, the leadership of the company passed to R.P.

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Lemon’s brother-in-law David Stodhart Oliver, a Bristol wine merchant.

The Maesteg Works remained in production from 1852 to 1859. In the latter year the works was closed due to the ‘pecuniary difficulties of Messrs. Lemon and Company’. It was put up for sale in 1860. A report on the works by John Woodhouse and Samuel Dobson in that year, presumably a guide for prospective buyers, gives a great deal of information about the Maesteg Ironworks. From 1852 to 1859, all three furnaces were in blast. A fourth furnace is referred to in the report; it was located at Cwmdu, one mile to the east of the Maesteg furnaces. In addition to the blast furnace, the Cwmdu site consisted of a cast house, blast-engine, a furnace lift and ten coke ovens. The small ironworks at Cwmdu had been established in the mid 1850s by Charles Sheppard, formerly of Bath, and was briefly in operation during the period 1857-9. In 1860 it was owned by R.P.Lemon & Company. During the years 1852-9, the Maesteg Works was primarily a producer of pig iron as Woodhouse and Dobson placed only limited emphasis on the castings turned out by the foundry at the site. The average annual output from the Maesteg furnaces for those seven years was 18,200 tons of pig iron, with a production peak of 20,175 tons in 1856. Of the iron made, 66% was classed as ‘white iron,’ 20% was classed as ‘bright iron,’ 11% was described as ‘mottled’ and a small percentage was termed ‘dark grey.’ The emphasis on the production of white iron at the works suggests that R.P. Lemon & Company was primarily concerned with supplying forge pig iron to wrought iron manufacturers, possibly in the West Midlands. From the report of Woodhouse and Dobson it appears that R.P.Lemon and Company sold their pig iron at ‘Stormy,’ the railway junction near Pyle. The junction was a trans-shipment point where the iron, brought down the line in the horse-drawn trams of the standard gauge DLPR, was transferred to the broad gauge wagons of the South Wales Railway. It appears that there was some kind of market for iron at the rail junction as the report includes a note that: ‘The average net price [per ton] obtained by Messrs. Lemon and Company, at Stormy, for pig iron sold by them during the five years

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ending 31st December, 1859, was £3. 0s.5d.’ In 1860 the Maesteg site consisted of the three open-top blast

furnaces with cast houses, eighty-six coke ovens and a foundry. The blast was provided by two blast engines, and it seems that all three furnaces had hot blast stoves attached. The foundry had two cupola furnaces, three moulders’ sheds and a loam stores. The site also included a fitting shop, a pattern shop, two sawpits, and stables for thirty horses. Other buildings included a furnace manager’s office, a weighing machine office, and ‘offices with a clerk`s house attached.’

Of the ore supplied to the Maesteg blast furnaces, 97% was local black-band ironstone. The average annual production of black-band during 1853-9 was 59,312 tons, with a production peak of 64,303 tons in 1858. From figures listed in the report, the average iron content of the black-band during the 1850s was about 32%. There were just four, redundant, calcining kilns in a poor state of repair on the site. The black-band ore was inefficiently ‘roasted’ in open clamps which had to be broken up, or even blasted, before the ore could be charged into the blast furnaces.

The Company Shop at Garnlwyd seems to have flourished during the 1850s. The report lists a ‘Provision Shop and Warehouse, and Manager’s House attached thereto,’ and includes the profit totals for the store for each of the years 1855-59. There was little variation from year to year; the average annual profit for the five-year period was £1,403, a significant contribution to the income of the company. Unlike the owners of the neighbouring Llynfi Works, the companies that developed the Maesteg Works appear to have had little involvement in the building of houses for the workforce. According to Woodhouse and Dobson, R. P. Lemon & Co. owned just ‘17 cottages, built on Maesteg Ucha which let for £110 a year.’ Contributory reasons for the eventual failure of Lemon & Company were also referred to in the report. One key factor was the cost of labour at the works. Apparently, the company paid much higher wages than ‘other Works in the same valley.’ Woodhouse and Dobson advised future buyers that, ‘wages should be reduced to the same standard as that of the other works.’ R.P. Lemon & Co. also lost revenue as ‘very disadvantageous sales, to secure temporary

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accommodation, were perpetually being made [at Stormy].’ The demise of R.P Lemon & Co. in 1860 and the closure of the Maesteg Ironworks marked the end of William Henry Buckland’s long association with the Maesteg district. During the years 1826 to 1836, 1844 to 1848 and from 1852 to 1860 he was a key figure in the development of the Maesteg Works and the township that grew around it. Buckland’s long career in the Llynfi district was characterised by contradictions. On the one hand he was a pillar of the Baptist Church in Maesteg and was held in high esteem by his workmen, yet during the 1830s he was referred to as a ‘consummate, unblushing scoundrel’ by his associate at the Maesteg Works, Robert Smith, and his controversial association with the Vale of Neath Brewery in the mid 1840s proved to be disastrous for the Maesteg Iron Company and the Maesteg township. After the failure of Lemon & Co in 1860, W.H. Buckland tragically seems to have stumbled into poverty and died ‘a poor man in advanced years’ in London in 1869. The Llynfi Valley historian, Thomas Morgan (Llyfnwy), writing in Welsh in 1870, shortly after Buckland’s death, sadly noted that: despite presiding for years in Maesteg, and being close to the hearts of thousands there, his wealth and greatness vanished like dew in the summer sun. He knew what poverty and need were before his death, so much so that his old workers in Maesteg organised a collection to be sent to him so that he might have bread to sustain him. As a further measure of the respect by which Buckland was held in the Llynfi Valley a newly-built residential street near the centre of the Maesteg township was named Alfred Street in the early 1870s after W.H. Buckland’s youngest son.

After the closure of the works early in 1860, an attempt was made, in August of the same year, to float a new joint-stock company to take over the site. It was intended that the new enterprise, The Maesteg Iron & Coal Company Ltd., would be launched with a capital of £60,000 in 6,000 £10 shares. Among the directors of the new venture were W. Gordon Thompson, Deputy Chairman of the

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South-Eastern Railway Company, James Brogden of Tondu, C. Kemp Dyer a director of the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, and Rowand Ronald, a director of the National Bank. The purchase price was agreed at £32,500. It would appear that the attempt at flotation failed as, after two years of inactivity, the ironworks and the valuable mineral estate around it were bought up by the neighbouring Llynvi Vale Iron Company in September 1862. Although all three of the furnaces at the Maesteg Works had been in blast during the 1850s, there is no evidence that any of the furnaces were in production from 1860 to 1872. In the latter year an attempt was made to redevelop the site and modernize two of the blast furnaces. The attempt was not successful and the Maesteg Ironworks site was abandoned in 1873. Some of the ironworks buildings survived up to the 1960s, and the site, plus adjoining derelict land, was cleared during 2003-4 before redevelopment for housing and a secondary school. The small Cwmdu works was dismantled soon after closure in 1860 and today the site is marked only by the remnants of the slag tip that was adjacent to the works.

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3. The Early Years of the Llynfi Ironworks (The New Works).

The construction of the second iron works in the Maesteg district, ‘The New Works,’ began in 1838 and it became an interesting example of a large integrated ironworks in the period 1855-76, on a scale comparable with some of the works along the north crop. All processes, from the preparation of iron ore to the manufacture of iron bar and wrought iron rails, were carried out on the compact Llynfi Valley site. During its forty-six year history the New Works had a number of changes of ownership, for example it was known as the Cambrian Works from 1839 to 1844. For clarity and continuity, for the period 1845-85, the works will be referred to as the Llynfi Works. The origins of this ironworks can be traced back to the mid 1830s and the initiatives of J.H. Allen, a Neath entrepreneur. In 1831 Allen had opened a spelter (zinc) works in the upper part of the valley at the northern terminus of the DLPR, and, just like Thomas Jones of Abergavenny before him, he was aware of the potential of the valley for iron making. He also, like Jones, held local mineral leases and sought the support of London capitalists to open a new ironworks at a time of high iron prices. The historian, Charles Wilkins, writing at the end of the nineteenth century, described Allen’s efforts thus: So to London, then as now the goal of company promoters, he went; and getting into the circle of such men, drew a vivid picture of prospects and profits. It was something akin to the gold lures of Australia, and capitalists sent down experts to see this famous valley, its abundance of excellent coal, its abundance of cheap labour and its attractive corners for residences. The experts reported favourably. From that ‘circle of such men’ The Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company was formed in May 1838 with a projected capital of £300,000 in 12,000 £25 shares. William Borradaile was the chairman of the board of directors and, from the beginning, the enterprise had

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close links with the London Joint-Stock Bank (LJSB). Philip Courtenay, Conservative MP for Bridgewater was a director and the company’s representatives in South Wales were J.M. Buckland of Court Herbert, Neath, and J.H. Allen, then residing at Porthcawl. The new company took over the Llynfi Valley site in June 1838. The optimism of that period of high iron prices is reflected in the large capital sum noted above and in the wording of press notices of the time. Prospective investors were advised that: ‘the minerals under the estate are deemed equal to the supply of 14 blast furnaces for 80 years.’ Press notices of May 1838 also stated that the initial plan was to build up to four blast furnaces and a rolling mill and that, ‘the iron furnaces may be expected to be erected and brought to blast within twelve months of commencement.’ Thus according to the company’s publicity, a large, modern integrated iron works should have been in operation by the beginning of 1840. However, there were construction delays during the winter of 1838-9 and, by the beginning of 1839, there was growing concern among the shareholders about the slow rate of progress. At the first Annual General Meeting, on 28 March 1839, the directors attempted to explain ‘the cause which had retarded the operations,’ and it was decided to draw up a progress report after the ‘summer building season’ to reassure anxious investors. That report was issued to shareholders, probably in January 1840, and a copy exists at the National Library of Wales among documents acquired from the Church in Wales. The report provides a useful summary of progress at the Cambrian Works up to the end of 1839. The first two blast furnaces were completed in October 1839; the first to be blown-in was No.3 on 13 October, followed by No.4 a week later. The average weekly output of pig iron from each furnace was sixty to seventy tons, a relatively low level of production. During 1839 the casting house, the blast engine house and the company shop were completed; the latter was linked to the DLPR by a short ‘siding.’ The report also states that there was a ‘back wall, twenty-six feet high, the whole length of the furnace range, the arches of which have yet to be built.’ An incline plane, with engine and boiler, was in operation ‘for raising

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the materials from the Dyffryn Llynvi Railway to the top of the furnaces.’ There were sixteen coke ovens and the foundations for another sixty-four, with six mine [iron ore] kilns. Two rows of cottages had been built and three houses had been completed in another row of ‘twelve superior cottages.’ The two rows of cottages were named Charles’ Row and Macgregor Row in the mid 1840s, and the third, unfinished, row later became Cavan Row. It was also noted that there was a ‘house for the Company’s railway carriage’ near the works. Despite the assurances contained in the report, the Cambrian company was evidently in difficulty by 1840. The boom in iron prices, linked to an early example of ‘railway mania,’ was over, and as iron prices dropped, openness and optimism were replaced by a certain reticence on the part of the Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company. The annual meeting for shareholders that took place in April 1840 was closed to the press, an action that only succeeded in attracting more attention to the company. At the time, a director disclosed to a correspondent of The Mining Journal that the press had been excluded because ‘the company was of a private nature.’ The secrecy surrounding the company came as a surprise because, earlier in the year, journalists had been encouraged to visit the ironworks and were welcomed by Mr J. M. Buckland, director-manager, and Mr Brunton, works’ engineer. As there was nothing to report from the meeting, a correspondent, who had recently returned from a visit to the Llynfi Valley, advised a likely shareholder to: Put himself on the Swansea Mail, pull up at the railway leading to the works, avail himself of the directors’ omnibus, and take his supper and his bed at the directors’ establishment. Next morning visit the works, admire the architecture, contemplate the profits, take dinner, visit the shop - and dream of dividends. A year later, in April 1841, the press was again excluded from a shareholders’ meeting. A brief statement by the company indicated that £200,000 had already been spent on the works under the direction of Mr. Brunton, the engineer. After the press had been

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excluded from the shareholders meeting of April 1840, the editor of The Mining Journal had not been too concerned about the secretive methods of the Cambrian enterprise as the venture was ‘still in its infancy.’ During April 1841 however, he adopted a less charitable approach and made the iron and spelter company the subject of a number of editorials. Apart from the threat to press freedom posed by the activities of the company, the editor was also concerned that the Cambrian shareholders had become ‘dupes of a secret enclave.’ His fears were realised a month later when a meeting for shareholders was convened to increase the company’s capital from £300,000 to £420,000 by upgrading £25 shares to £35. The move was a desperate attempt to raise the funds required to complete the works, and if shareholders could not, or would not, upgrade their shares, they would have to forfeit their existing holdings. One disillusioned shareholder, Robert Taylor of Bristol, explained the problems facing many Cambrian investors via the correspondence columns of The Mining Journal. He was drawn to the venture in 1838 by the claims outlined in the Prospectus of the Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company, and was particularly attracted by the company’s ‘pledge’ that although shares cost £25, ‘calls’ would only be made to £15. In reality this was not the case and, over two years or so, Taylor had responded to each of the company’s ‘calls’ and had paid the full £25 for each of his shares. He was in a very difficult situation after the meeting that was called in May 1841 to upgrade the shares. As he had no more capital to invest, he would thus have to forfeit his shares with disastrous personal consequences. In his letter Robert Taylor also complained about the secretive nature of the company’s activities, and the way major changes were voted through by small numbers at the meetings. The editor was sympathetic, stating the situation had arisen because the London Joint-Stock Bank (LJSB) appeared to be the main shareholder in ‘this Cambrian adventure.’ The company was thus in crisis by the Spring of 1841. According to the editor of The Mining Journal, a large proportion of the share issue had not been taken up by the public so the LJSB had intervened to ‘shore-up’ the ailing enterprise. To make matters

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worse, as iron prices dropped, registered shareholders were not responding to the Cambrian company’s regular ‘calls’ on shares. The extent of defaulting must have been considerable as James Munn Buckland, with a key position in the company, was one of the main offenders. Buckland held 305 shares (worth £7,625) which were initially acquired with a 10% deposit. He responded to five calls paying £4,500 with the five ‘instalments.’ He then began to default on his payments during 1841 and left the company in February 1842. About eighteen months later he was successfully sued by G. Hudden, the Company Secretary for a total of £8,836. The case, at the Bristol Summer Assizes, was fully reported in The Mining Journal. Of the total of £8,836, just over £3,000 was cash due for calls on shares, and £5,774 was for monies received ‘over and above his reimbursement’ as manager of the works. In the Directors’ report of 1840 it was emphasised that the future of the Cambrian company depended on the construction of the forge and mill, and the production of finished wrought iron. As there was insufficient share-capital to complete the works, the Cambrian venture was thus caught in a vicious circle during 1840-2. At a time of very low iron prices the works could only produce pig iron, which was most vulnerable to price fluctuation and had the lowest potential for profit-making. If the works had been completed before the slump in prices, the company’s forge and mill would have supplied the more stable, more profitable market for finished wrought iron and could have probably survived the trade depression. Although, in a Government report, which was compiled in 1841, there are references to ‘furnaces’ in blast at the Cambrian site, by January 1842 reports in The Cambrian were referring to ‘abject poverty’ in the Maesteg district because of ‘the extreme slowness of the works.’ Conditions evidently improved towards the end of 1842 and, in a press report of 31 December 1842, it was noted that, ‘at long last,’ there could be a return for investors in the company as the first ‘significant’ amount of iron was produced from the No.4 blast furnace. It was obviously an event of some importance as the precise amount, 112 tons 1 qtr. 3 lbs. for the week ending 10 December 1842 was quoted. A year later, in early December 1843, there were ‘great

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preparations’ in hand to blow-in a second blast furnace. The blowing-in of the second Cambrian furnace, and also the second furnace at the Maesteg Works, were seen as something of a turning point for the Llynfi Valley iron industry; a correspondent in The Mining Journal reported that the decisions to blow-in the two furnaces: ……evidences some anticipation of movement – and the inhabitants of this place hope, when the New Year comes in, to enjoy the sight of four furnaces illuminating the horizon. It is thus probable that the first two Cambrian furnaces, which had been completed in October 1839, were in production on a limited scale during 1840-1 but, with the fall in iron prices, only one remained in blast during 1841-3. Curiously, the first furnaces to produce iron were numbered ‘3’ and ‘4’. A study of the Tithe Map for the early 1840s sheds some light on the system of numbering. The blast engine house is shown on the map and also the 300ft. casting house to the north of it. At the north end of the casting house two furnaces are shown, presumably No.4 at the north end and No.3 adjoining it. The map also seems to show, surprisingly, the large blast pipes connecting the engine house to the furnaces, one run of piping extending over 300ft. to the furthest blast furnace. The location of the first furnaces to produce iron, 300ft. from the source of the blast, confirms that it was originally intended to build four blast furnaces as a group, rather than add furnaces, piecemeal, in response to market demand. Limited activity at the new ironworks before 1843 was probably reflected in the deteriorating fortunes of the DLPR in the early 1840s. The gross income of the railway company, an indicator of traffic flows on the line, declined 17% from 1840 to 1842. In May 1840 gross income for the previous year was £4,340. It was £4,194 in 1841, £3,600 in 1842 and £4,053 in 1843. The gross income for 1844 was £4,838, an increase of 20% on the previous year, and for 1845, it was £6,358, an increase of 31%. The revival in the fortunes of the railway company was noted at a shareholders’ meeting in

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November 1844; investors in the DLPR were informed that: Two years ago, the company were largely in debt, had no money in their bankers’ hands, and shares were sold at public auction for £40, which cost £100 - now they owe nothing, have a large balance, and £100 per share was offered and refused at the last meeting. Thus there does not seem to have been any significant increase in traffic from 1840 to 1842. During the latter year, with low iron prices, with just one furnace in blast at the Maesteg Works, the horse railway in a run down state and the Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company in financial difficulties, the industrial future of the Llynfi Valley appeared bleak to say the least. The fortunes of the DLPR certainly improved after 1843, trends which could reflect an increase in pig iron traffic as the two Cambrian furnaces came into full production. It is evident that, in common with other iron companies conceived in the late 1830s such as the Blaenavon Iron & Coal Company, ambitious production plans for the works were suspended during the period 1840-4. The Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company must have derived some revenue from coal and spelter production in the early 1840s but, with only limited returns from iron making during 1843 (after enormous capital outlay), the company was dissolved in February 1844. The dissolution of the Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company seems to have marked the end of J.H. Allen’s association with the early industrial development of the Llynfi Valley. The Neath entrepreneur, who was the son of Michael Allen the manager of the Crown Copper Works in Skewen, seems to have been perpetually on the verge of great things. He was a pioneering spelter producer in the early 1830s, a key figure in the considerable Cambrian speculation in the late 1830s, and a shipowner with his own schooner, the ‘Alpha,’ which was launched at Porthcawl in 1841. By 1842, however, with the failure of the Cambrian venture, his ambitious and enterprising efforts had come to nought and he was declared bankrupt. Little is known of Allen from about 1844 to his death, aged fifty-nine in 1855. He is not listed in the Glamorgan districts of the 1851 Census,

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although he was living at Lletai, Pencoed, Bridgend in the mid 1850s. The partially completed works that Allen had helped to set up was put up for sale in March 1844. The sales notices in The Cambrian describe a works in transition with two blast furnaces and the foundations of two more, a substantial blast engine house, a very large casting house and the foundations of a forge and a mill. Seventy-two cottages, recently built for the workforce, were also included in the sale. The potential of the newly discovered black-band seams was also emphasized. The details of the works listed in the sale notice of March 1844 were virtually the same as those described in the report to shareholders of January 1840, thus confirming that no additions had been made to the site during the intervening four years. The Cambrian ironworks was bought by a new venture, the Llynvi Iron Company, which began trading in January 1845. The change of ownership marked the start of a period of rapid expansion for the ironworks, and the change also marked the beginning of an eventful period when Dr John Bowring MP became a key figure in the development of the Llynfi Valley iron industry.

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4. The Llynvi Iron Company and Dr John Bowring The transition from the unsuccessful Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company to the ambitious Llynvi Iron Company was a key event in the history of the Llynfi Valley yet there is very little contemporary evidence to explain the change. The period of transition was of great local importance as it was the time when a small group of wealthy investors emerged from the ruins of the rather reckless Cambrian speculation. It was this small group of proprietors who would ensure the survival of iron-making in Maesteg, and prompt the consequent development of the Llynfi Valley for the next thirty years. The Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company was undoubtedly a major speculation when it was floated in 1838. A rare listing of the firm’s ninety-three shareholders in the Close Rolls at the Public Record Office, dated 8 June 1843, includes a number of prominent figures from the early Victorian period. Among those listed were the poet, William Wordsworth, the printer and publisher John Bowyer Nichols and Sir Felix Booth, the gin distiller who sponsored the Ross Expedition to Arctic Canada in 1829. Most of the other shareholders were wealthy London merchants and barristers including Thomas Farncomb, who was elected Lord Mayor of London some years later in 1849. Six shareholders were directors of the London Joint Stock Bank, three of whom were also directors of the Cambrian venture. Several investors had connections with the East India Company: for example, Charles Norris and Major-General Archibald Robertson had been high-ranking officials with the company in India. There was also a small group of fourteen South Wales shareholders including ten prominent citizens of the town of Neath, J.H. Allen’s home town. The only shareholder from the local area was Gwilym Jenkins of Dyffryn Farm, Coegnant. During 1841-2, with the company in crisis, divisions seem to have appeared among the shareholders. In the Spring of 1842 there were objections in Parliament to an Act introduced to regulate the affairs of the Cambrian company. Norris, Bowyer-Nichols and Robertson were among the objectors, and the Act did not reach the Statute Book. In December 1842, William Wordsworth’s solicitor,

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William Strickland Cookson, advised the poet: If you have done no act recognising & confirming what Mr Courtenay did in the matter of the Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company, you are not a shareholder or liable as such, and I hope you will keep clear of it. It would appear that William Wordsworth did not take Cookson’s advice as the poet was included as a shareholder in the newly-issued list of investors of June 1843 referred to above. Whatever ‘Mr Courtenay did in the matter of the Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company’ was probably a key event in the early history of the Llynfi Valley iron industry, yet it remains a mystery. Philip Courtenay, who seems to have been a prime mover in the early affairs of the Cambrian venture and was William Wordsworth’s financial adviser for twenty-five years, died ‘under distressing circumstances’ at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool in December 1841. The fifty-seven year old barrister had been in the habit of taking laudanum for minor ailments and died of an overdose of the drug in the hotel. After some initial concerns about the manner of Courtenay’s death, the inquest jury agreed that the barrister had died of an accidental overdose of the medicine he was in the habit of taking without consulting a doctor. In February 1843 a second attempt was made to pass an Act to regulate the affairs of the Cambrian company; it received the Royal Assent in June. The list of shareholders was drawn up as a Memorial under the terms of the Act. The listing includes the names of Dr John Bowring MP, William Mitcalfe and James Cavan, key figures in the early history of Maesteg. The successor to the Cambrian venture, the newly-formed Llynvi Iron Company, had just thirty-seven shareholders in 1845, eighteen of whom were listed as investors in the Cambrian company two years earlier, and four of whom were directors of the LJSB. Of the thirty-seven investors, Dr Bowring and William Mitcalfe, a wealthy London coal factor, were by far the largest shareholders. For reasons which will be discussed in more detail later in this

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chapter, it is likely that Dr John Bowring first became involved with the Cambrian venture at the beginning of 1843, although it’s likely that Mitcalfe, as a director of the LJSB, was involved with the Cambrian company earlier. The ambitious new company had a capital of just £100,000 and had acquired a partially completed ironworks which had already cost more than double that amount. It is possible thus that Mitcalfe and some of his fellow directors at the bank saw the potential of the half-completed ironworks in Maesteg and, independently of the LJSB, formed a joint stock company to develop the property. Although there is very little information about the reasons for Dr Bowring’s initial involvement with the Maesteg district, he was certainly seeking investment opportunities after his election to Parliament in August 1841. It is thus probable that he also saw the potential of the Cambrian site and decided to join the high-powered group of bankers and merchants in the development of the iron trade in the Llynfi Valley. Dr Bowring was certainly the key player in the Llynfi enterprise during the mid 1840s due, presumably, to his large stake in the company. His brother, Charles, was installed as Resident Director in January 1845 and the Doctor lost no time in naming the district around the ironworks ‘Bowrington.’ Although Mitcalfe was also a major shareholder, Bowring, as Chairman of the company, seems to have been the principal partner and the prime mover in the venture. Doctor John Bowring, who was about fifty years of age when he first became involved with the Llynfi Valley iron industry, was a far from typical South Wales ironmaster. As a young man he had travelled widely through Europe developing his skills as a translator, and also supporting the efforts of liberal reformers on the Continent. In 1822 he was imprisoned for a month at Boulogne for carrying ‘letters of a treasonable nature,’ and in 1824, during the struggle for Greek independence, he was controversially involved in the arrangement of loans in support of the newly-formed government of Greece. In 1829 he was awarded a doctorate by the University of Groningen for services to Dutch literature. A Bowring lecture on free trade, at the York Hotel in Manchester in 1837, prompted the

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formation of a provisional committee which eventually established the Anti Corn-Law League in March 1839. By the early 1840s he was nationally known as a linguist and a writer; he was a former editor of The Westminster Review and had been a close friend and associate of the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham. Bowring compiled and published ‘The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham’ in eleven volumes in 1843. During his parliamentary career in the 1840s Dr Bowring campaigned for free trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws, for the abolition of flogging in the Army and for the introduction of decimal coinage. In May 1842, when the second Chartist Petition was presented to Parliament, Bowring made a speech in support of the petition. He was one of the small minority of forty-seven MPs who voted in support of the Chartists’ appeal for democratic reform; 287 voted against. After his election as a Whig (Liberal) MP for Bolton in 1841, Bowring sought the income necessary to sustain his political career. As he lacked inherited wealth and received no salary as an MP, he evidently thought that the annual returns on his investment in the Llynfi Valley would give him the financial independence required to pursue his political ambitions. John Bowring thus invested his fortune and his future in the Llynvi Iron Company which began trading at a time when ‘railway mania’ was once again about to transform the iron trade. Dr Bowring lived at Queen’s Square, Westminster, and made frequent visits to the valley; his brother, Charles, lived in the company residence near the works, the house known today as Llynfi Lodge. The part of the Llynfi Valley with Bowring’s ironworks and the seventy-two company cottages resembled, in some ways, a model industrial village in the mid 1840s due to Bowring’s paternal approach to his workforce and the prosperous state of the iron trade. A Government Commissioner, visiting the Llynfi Valley in 1845, was impressed by the ‘enlightened interest’ the Llynvi Iron Company was showing ‘in the well being of the working people.’ In 1847 The Mining Journal included a great deal of information about Bowrington. It was reported that Dr Bowring or ‘other gentlemen

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connected with the works,’ made ‘domiciliary visits’ to the workers’ cottages ‘to encourage habits of economy and cleanliness.’ Awards of 5s to £1 were presented to ‘diligent occupiers.’ The correspondent concluded his report: ‘we are not acquainted with another works in which the comfort and convenience of the men and their families would seem to be so well attended to.’ The company soon opened a well-equipped school near the works and, in 1846, Dr Bowring set up a library and a Mechanics Institute for the workforce. In the same year the company built another ninety-six cottages close to the ironworks. Most of the 200 or so houses built by the iron companies in the 1840s are still very much part of the urban landscape in Maesteg today. Eight of the Llynfi company`s rows and streets remain intact, forming probably the most complete example of an early Victorian iron works settlement in South Wales. Bowring’s enlightened perception of the capitalist system that was transforming Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century, is evident from impromptu speeches he made in September 1846 when on a visit to his brother, Charles, at Bowrington. Dr Bowring was given a hero’s welcome by the residents of the valley and was presented with a silver salver as a token of appreciation for his efforts to improve rail communications in the district, and for his success in abolishing the truck system at the ironworks. A report of his speeches in The Cambrian includes the following: In their happiness [the workforce] consisted his; there was a reciprocity of obligation between master and workman, and if the men were thankful for their receipts, ought not the masters to be thankful to the men for endeavouring to give them ample interest for their outlay of capital?………He was now by interest identified with them, the prospects of himself and his family, both present and future, depended entirely on the prosperity of the Llynvi Works. The first years of Bowring’s chairmanship of the Llynvi Iron Co. coincided with an unprecedented boom in the iron trade. In 1844 Parliament had sanctioned 805 miles of railway, by 1846 the figure

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was 4,538 miles. The price of Welsh ‘railway iron’ increased 60% in 1844-5. A third blast furnace had been blown in, probably in 1845, and Dr Bowring looked to the future with great optimism. In those early years of the new Llynvi Iron Co. all the requirements for success seemed to be in place. Iron prices were high, and there were reserves of iron ore and coal close to the works so production costs were low. Prosperity seemed assured. In a letter to his son, Frederick, in February 1845, the Doctor wrote: ‘You will be glad to hear how prosperously things are going on at Bowrington, where money is making fast and the iron is becoming silver and gold.’ In another letter, in September 1845, he wrote: ‘We are anxious to have four furnaces in blast, the demand for iron being very vigorous now, we have been selling largely.’ The year 1845 was thus a successful one. In April wages were increased substantially, a 10% dividend was announced in February 1846, and the company’s capital was increased from £100,000 to £120,000. The site was enlarged in 1846 with the addition of a large forge and a rail mill. The changes transformed the works from a blast furnace location, producing mainly pig iron, to a sizeable integrated ironworks turning out wrought iron in the form of bar and rails. The forge, opened formally on April 4 1846, was 275ft. long and 44ft. wide with twelve puddling and eight reheating furnaces. A Mr Thomas Jones was the forge master. At the celebration to mark the opening of the forge, horseshoes and screws made from Llynfi bar iron were proudly exhibited. Later in the year, on 31 August, the first rails were produced at the new rail mill. As noted above, another ninety-six cottages were built in 1846 to accommodate the growing workforce, and Bowrington emerged as a distinctive unit within the valley. The settlement seems to have been quite separate from Maesteg rather than, as some sources state, an alternative name for the latter. For example, in December 1846, The Cambrian reported that the ‘Maesteg, Bowrington and Garth Mechanics` Institute’ had been opened. Bowrington certainly appears as a distinctive, self-contained, ironworks settlement during Bowring’s chairmanship. The shop and the works were in the centre; nearby, to the north and east, were 153 cottages for the workmen with a row of fifteen larger

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houses for key workers. The manager’s residence and the school were immediately south of the works. The size of the labour force in 1846 is not clear. In 1841, when the works were ‘in their infancy and not one third completed,’ the clerk to the Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company, H. Cooper, estimated that the workforce at the ironworks, the collieries and the ore workings was 455, including twenty females and twelve children under thirteen years. Some years later, in 1853, correspondence in The Cambrian during the truck controversy in Maesteg included estimates of 1,500-1,700 workers. Dr Bowring made his own assessment in 1846, in a speech reported in The Cambrian: It was true that he and his family had embarked a large capital in the Llynvi Works, and since the beginning of their (the present company’s) taking possession, where tens of men were once employed, there were now hundreds, and where hundreds, there were now thousands. The year 1846 was another profitable one for the enterprise. Dividends of 8% were announced, and Dr Bowring was considering the possibility of incorporating the company by Act of Parliament. This was early in 1847 and represents the highpoint of the ‘Bowring Years’ in the Llynfi Valley. By the end of the year Dr Bowring was in serious financial difficulties as the value of his investments in the Llynvi Iron Company plummeted. The year turned out to be a disastrous one, and the decline of the company was spectacular. The half-year to June only produced dividends of 2.5%. In October a shareholders’ meeting was convened to raise £50,000, probably from the City merchants who held the majority of the shares. By November 1847 it was evident that the Llynvi Iron Company was going to make a loss on the year. To add to his troubles, in the same month, Dr Bowring and his brother were held up at gunpoint on the road between Bridgend and Maesteg, and robbed of £1,000. This large sum of money was to be paid out as weekly wages to the workmen at the Llynfi Works. Fortunately, most of the money was quickly recovered.

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Dr John Bowring had become a victim of another trade depression which followed a period of railway speculation. Only 303 miles of railway were sanctioned by Parliament in 1848, and the price of Welsh railway iron dropped 40% in the period 1846-8. As well as his considerable investments in the Llynvi Iron Company, Bowring had shares in the London and Blackwall Railway in east London. He also lost heavily when share values in that company collapsed in 1847. Although Llynvi Iron Co. dividend payments seem to have declined sharply and individual investors like Bowring fell by the wayside, the company continued trading through the slump of the late 1840s. It cut wages and waited patiently for an upturn in the iron trade. The reasons for the survival of the enterprise in the late 1840s are not clear as only a fragment of a Llynvi Iron Company file survives at the Public Record Office and, apparently, no other formal company records exist. It is probable that the company remained solvent in the late 1840s as some of the shareholders, with considerable reserves of personal capital, were prepared to provide the additional funding that enabled the Llynfi Works to survive the trade depression of the late 1840s. Significantly, it seems the company could generate capital without having to resort to the lending banks and the consequent risk of bankruptcy. Dr Bowring’s fortunes changed in October 1848 when Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, offered him the vacant consulship in Canton, China, at a salary of £1,800 a year. He left England for the Far East in January 1849. In Canton, in November 1849, Bowring was still hoping for a revival in the iron trade ‘in two or three years,’ and a return home. His hopes were dashed a year later when his bonds in the Llynvi Iron Company were cancelled. In November 1850 he wrote about the iron company to another of his sons, Edgar:

The conduct of the company I consider an intolerable injustice, cruelty and oppression. I consider that each of my [8] children is pillaged of nearly £2,000. I think they have used their power as reckless tyrants use it. I now grieve that I ever left England - to be humiliated and scorned here - and to see my property plundered and

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confiscated in my absence. Bowring, who had recovered from a similar financial crisis in 1828, when his trading company, Bowring and Co. failed, soon immersed himself in his consular duties and developed his interest in the commercial life of S.E. Asia. He was knighted in 1854 and became Governor of Hong Kong (1854-9). During his years in the Far East he expanded the colony and established important commercial links between Britain and the Kingdom of Siam. In 1856, after the Chinese had boarded the British registered vessel, The Arrow, in the Pearl River, Bowring ensured a place in history when he dispatched a naval force to Canton. The city was bombarded and eventually occupied by British forces. The episode developed into the Second Opium War with China (1856-9). After returning to England, in 1859, he spent his retirement writing on a wide range of topics and worked as a commercial agent for the governments of Siam and the Hawaiian Islands. He died, aged eighty, in 1872 and was buried at Exeter. Sir John Bowring was, arguably, the most interesting of the personalities associated with the industrialisation of the Llynfi Valley. During his eventful association with the Maesteg area he promoted the Llynvi Valley Railway Company to bring steam locomotives to the district, and he removed, for a time at least, the worst excesses of the truck system. Because of the economic difficulties of the late 1840s, the railway project failed, to be revived in the 1850s. A new steam-driven rail link to the main South Wales Railway at Bridgend was eventually opened in 1861. The story of Bowring’s reform of the truck system in the Llynfi Valley can be traced through the pages of Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates for the period 1842-43. Although Bowring`s decision to end truck for his workmen was greatly appreciated in the valley, he was in some ways a reluctant reformer. The truck system, which was based on the company shop, limited the purchasing choice of the workers by compelling them to take goods and provisions in lieu of cash wages. The system, though illegal, was both convenient and profitable for iron companies setting up works in sparsely populated

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areas. Truck flourished in the Llynfi Valley during the 1830s but there was growing opposition to it during the early 1840s. In April 1842 a Lewis Howell of Maesteg contacted W. Busfield Ferrand, a Tory MP and prominent anti-truck campaigner, and forwarded a petition from the valley for presentation at the House of Commons. A second anti-truck petition from Maesteg was placed before the House on May 30 1842. During the first half of 1842 a significant amount of parliamentary time was devoted to the truck system, and Dr Bowring made a number of speeches on the subject. Although he was against the profiteering associated with truck, Bowring seems to have been in favour of a company shop. For example, during a general debate on the payment of workers` wages, on May 5 1842, the Doctor stated that: ‘the establishment of a shop in connexion with extensive manufactories was frequently beneficial to the work people, and was so regarded by them.’ The reports of Parliamentary debates in Hansard also suggest that Dr Bowring did not become directly involved with the iron trade in Maesteg until 1843. This seems likely as, during 1842, William Busfield Ferrand, the Young England Tory and prominent anti-truck campaigner, continually harassed a number of Whig supporters of the Anti-Corn Law League who were industrialists with company shops. Evidently Dr Bowring was not involved with the iron industry in the valley during 1842 as he was not singled out for criticism by Busfield Ferrand even though the Tory MP was aware of conditions in Maesteg. For example, on 6 April 1842, Ferrand had presented the anti-truck petition, referred to above, at the House of Commons on behalf of residents of the Llynfi Valley. However, by the beginning of 1843 Bowring seems to have become involved with the Cambrian company as, early in that year, Ferrand turned his attention to the Doctor and his association with truck in Maesteg. By February 1843 Dr Bowring was under pressure from Ferrand to deny that he, ‘a Member of the House of Commons was one of those profiting from the [truck] system.’ On February 16 1843 Bowring made a statement to the House which marked the end of the truck system for the workforce at the Cambrian Works:

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There was formerly a shop connected with the works, and he [Dr Bowring] believed the shop had been a great blessing to the people employed, but immediately he became connected with the establishment, he directed that the shop should be done away with, that the law might not be evaded either directly or indirectly. Although Bowring was a great supporter of international free-trade, he seems to have had genuine misgivings about relying on market forces to supply the workforce in newly-developed townships which were far from established shops and services. As a consequence Dr Bowring seems to have reached something of a compromise in Maesteg. In the Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry into the State of Education in Wales (1847), it was noted that the Company Shop in Bowrington had not been abandoned but was leased to an independent trader with whom ‘the company did not interfere.’ The store was thus kept in operation ‘to ensure a supply at all events.’ However, Bowring ensured that the workforce was paid in cash for the first time, and, as the workers were no longer compelled to use the former company store, other shops opened-up in the township. The Doctor’s role in ending truck for his employees in the Llynfi Valley in 1843 was fully acknowledged, if a little overstated, in a letter to the Editor of The Cambrian in September 1853: Dr. Bowring will be venerated at Maesteg for having had the manliness, the honour, and honesty voluntarily to surrender a monopoly which he believed to be unjust, and readily to relinquish profits which he perceived to be ungodly gain. He gave to the poor their rights and carried away their blessing. In addition to ending the truck system, Bowring had ensured that the plans for the ironworks, drawn up eight years before, had been largely carried through by 1846. The amount of company housing was doubled at Bowrington; in the mid 1840s it was regarded as something of an exemplary industrial settlement because of its layout and the enlightened approach of the company under Bowring’s

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chairmanship. By the 1870s Bowrington had merged into the urban area of Maesteg, and today only street names remain to mark the ‘Bowring Years.’ A shopping development of the 1980s in Maesteg was named ‘The Bowrington Arcade,’ and John Street in Nantyffyllon, named after the Doctor, and Charles Row in Maesteg, named after his brother, remain as links with that period. Bowring left behind a severely depressed local economy in the late 1840s. By early November 1847 the trade depression was affecting all the ironworks served by the DLPR. The Llynvi Iron Company cut wages by 10% and, in December, made a further cut of miners’ wages by 20%, a reduction which resulted in a mineworkers’ strike. Because of stockpiles of coal, the works remained in production. Prices for Welsh railway iron continued to fall until 1850, and there was a further reduction in wages in December 1848. However, the fourth blast furnace at the Llynfi Works was completed in 1849, although, at the end of that year, only two of the four furnaces on the Llynfi site were in blast. In fact only two of the nine furnaces in the Maesteg area were in blast at the end of 1849; at the recently opened Garth Iron Works two furnaces were idle and the third was under construction, and the three furnaces at the Old Works were still out of commission. ……………………………………………

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5. The Llynvi Vale Iron Company and William Mitcalfe.

By the early 1850s another phase in the iron trade cycle was about to begin. Prices rose sharply in 1852, which was also the year when the Llynfi Works was put up for sale. It was eventually purchased by a syndicate of nineteen investors, mainly London merchants, most of whom had had close links with the Llynvi Iron Company. The Vendors representing that company were Stephen Metcalfe (a Bristol wine merchant), Francis B. Goldney, Francis C. Brown and John H. Forbes. The re-constituted enterprise traded as The Llynvi Vale Iron Company, and was registered as a joint stock venture on January 1 1853 with a share capital of £120,000 made up of 1,200 £100 shares. Of the nineteen investors, just six held 77% of the shares. William Mitcalfe was by far the largest shareholder with 410 shares, the other five were James Cavan, merchant, (150 shares), Charles McGarel (100), James Spence, merchant, (100), Thomas Grove Edwards (ninety-four), and George Moffatt MP, tea merchant, (seventy-six). Of the six major shareholders, Mitcalfe, Cavan and Grove Edwards were listed as investors in the Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company in 1843; McGarel and Moffatt were original shareholders in the Llynvi Iron Company in 1845, and James Spence joined the partnership in 1852. The chairman of the new enterprise was Alexander Macgregor (1792-1871), who had been the vice-chairman of the Llynvi Iron Company in 1845, and the chairman after Dr Bowring’s departure in 1848. Although Alexander Macgregor played a key role in the early development of the Llynfi district there are surprisingly few references to him in historical surveys of the valley. However, from a study of contemporary iron company documents, some of Macgregor’s letters and a range of contemporary newspaper articles, some biographical details can be assembled about this significant figure in the history of Maesteg. The Alexander Macgregor commemorated by the street-name Macgregor Row in Maesteg, was a Scottish banker and colonial merchant with commercial links to the West Indies. During his chairmanship of the Llynvi Iron Company he was also a Board

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member of the Standard Life and the Colonial Life assurance companies and a key member of the West India Committee, a significant pressure group that lobbied the British Government regarding commercial activities in the Caribbean. Through his role with the Committee he was directly involved with the movement of immigrant labour from India to the Caribbean in the late 1840s. Although he was not a major investor in the iron company Macgregor, as an experienced merchant and company director, was evidently ‘drafted in’ as a ‘safe pair of hands’ in 1845 as deputy to Bowring. In later years, as chairman of the Llynvi Valley Railway Company, he supervised the re-routing of the track through the valley at a lower level, and the conversion of the railway to steam power. In addition to Macgregor, there were two other directors of the Llynvi Vale Iron Company: Charles Colman, a London wharfinger who had promoted the new company in 1852, and Philip Rundell Goldney, a lace merchant. Stephen Wright Metcalfe, one of the Vendors noted above, became a director of the new company later in 1853. Stephen Metcalfe, who was the son of William Mitcalfe, became a major shareholder in the enterprise by the late 1850s, and was chairman of the company in 1858. During the mid 1850s the works developed into a major integrated site, manufacturing a range of iron products. It is probable that the blast furnaces were upgraded in 1853 as drawings for the Llynfi company in the Neath Abbey Iron Company Collection show new ‘charging and gas apparatus’ for the four furnaces. The drawings date from January 1853 and seem to indicate that the tops of the furnaces were enclosed at that time with a ‘bell and hopper’ arrangement. From the drawings, blast furnaces No.1 and No.3 were similar in size with top-opening (throat) diameters of 9ft. 2ins. and 8ft.10ins. respectively. The other furnaces had slightly smaller openings with throat diameters of 7ft.10ins (No.2), and 8ft.4ins (No.4). There was certainly a period of expansion at the works in the years 1853-5; the number of puddling furnaces was considerably increased and, in the latter year, a large rail mill was opened and two

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large beam engines were purchased from the Neath Abbey Iron Company. A pyramid-frame beam engine with a 42-inch diameter cylinder was installed for the rail mill, and a 40-inch blast engine was placed alongside the existing 52½-inch beam engine in the double engine house. The opening of the new mill certainly attracted a great deal of interest in the press and in the iron trade. When it was formally opened on October 6 1855, a correspondent in the Cardiff & Merthyr Guardian reported that the new addition to the Llynfi Works would ‘afford employment to several hundred hands.’ Writing in Welsh some years later in 1874, the historian Dafydd Morganwg described the mill as ‘un o’r rhai goraf yn y wlad’ (one the best in the country). Much further afield, The Mining Magazine, published in New York, carried this notice in the edition that covered the period January to July 1856. An event of some importance to the district, came off recently at the Llynvi Iron Works, South Wales, by the opening of a new rail-mill and puddling furnaces, the former said to be the largest in the world. Mr Richard Evans, the forge manager, officiated on the occasion. These mills and furnaces, when in full work, are said to be capable of turning out 50 tons of rails in 12 hours. The driving wheel alone weighs 76 tons, and the fly-wheel 65 tons. From the notice, the size of the mill was certainly among the largest in the world in the mid 1850s, and the large capacity of the mill was further emphasised some years later, in 1867. Then the capacity of the mill was quoted as 800 tons of rails per week in a local newspaper report. If the report were accurate then it certainly backs up the claim made in the New York journal that the new rail mill would have been one of the largest in the world at that time. The new developments at the works during the mid 1850s had been efficiently funded by upgraded all the existing £100 shares held by the small group of investors to £125, thus creating £30,000 for the changes at the site.

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The considerable scale of the operation around 1855 seems a little surprising as the Llynfi enterprise was the only large ironworks in South Wales still completely reliant on a horse-drawn rail link. All other works of similar size were served by steam locomotives or canals (or a combination of both). Charles Hampton, the Llynfi Works’ manager, at a meeting to promote a new railway, The Maesteg, Glyncorrwg & Briton Ferry Railway, in 1852, referred to the constraints of the horse railway and the economic benefits of a steam rail link:

The cost of conveyance of coal from Maesteg to Porthcawl was now, including all charges, 3s.4d. per ton; whereas along the proposed line to Briton Ferry it would not be more than 9d. a ton. In addition to high freight costs, the condition of the horse railway was giving cause for concern in the mid 1850s. In June 1857 the Llynvi Valley Railway Company (the re-formed DLPR) published its prospectus and indicated the route of the proposed steam railway to the main line. The route of the new broad gauge railway did not follow the line of the tramway in the upper Llynfi Valley, and the track seems to have been neglected during the years of transition from horse haulage to steam locomotion. In June 1857 the Llynvi Vale Iron Co. took out a prosecution against the railway company due to the poor state of the track. Despite the problems and the high transport costs, the Llynvi Vale Iron Company seems to have prospered during the years 1853-57, and managed to survive a trade recession in the late 1850s that saw the demise of the neighbouring Maesteg Works and the closure of the great Penydarren Works at Merthyr. The beginning of that temporary downturn in the fortunes of the Llynfi Works came towards the end of 1857 when 210 men were laid off as the production of rails was suspended. At the same time there was a wage reduction of 20% and a period of short-time working. There were a number of reasons for the survival of such a large enterprise through the 1850s with only limited transport links in such a volatile business as the iron trade. A primary reason must have

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been low production costs, in particular the low cost of assembling raw materials at the blast furnace. Coal, iron ore and fireclay for furnace brickwork could all be obtained within a mile and a half of the furnaces. The clay ironstone workings were adjacent to the works, and two of the company’s largest collieries, Dyffryn Madoc Pit and the Gin Pit, were actually on the ironworks site. Only limestone had to be hauled to the site via the tramway. A key element seems to have been the accessible black-band iron ore. The area to the north west of the works, on the southern slopes of Garn Wen, yielded a great deal of the ore from open pits and levels. Across the valley, the company had access to the main body of the ore, under Mynydd Bach, via levels in the Coegnant district. The ironstone thus gave the Llynfi Works an advantage that could have offset its high transport costs. Apart from its accessibility, the black-band had advantages over the clay-band ore in South Wales. For example, as it occurred with coal, it required no extra fuel for the roasting (or calcining) process which removed impurities before the ore was charged into the blast furnace. The black-band also yielded a relatively high proportion of iron compared with some other South Wales ores. The Lower Black-band, for example, contained 36% iron in its raw state, but up to 55% after roasting without additional fuel costs. At the railway company meeting noted above, the advantages of the black-band in the Llynfi Valley were outlined: The discovery of the black band iron ore in this district has greatly added to its importance. The facility with which the ore, as well as the coal, is obtained, enables the manufacturer to produce iron at a much lower cost than in any other locality. The iron made with this ore combines the fluidity of the Scotch iron with the strength of the Shropshire, and the peculiar advantages have only to be developed to make the locality the chief seat of the iron trade. Thus low production costs seem to have made a major contribution to the survival of the works. As raw material costs made up over 70% of production costs in the mid nineteenth century, the location of the site in the midst of considerable mineral wealth

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allowed it to compete with other South Wales ironworks with far better transport links. Another factor was probably the quality of the iron produced at the Llynfi Works. Unlike the majority of South Wales works, a blend of local black-band ore was used in the blast furnaces. The resulting iron was both strong and malleable. In 1846 the first rails manufactured were described as ‘remarkably good and tough’ by a correspondent of the Cardiff & Merthyr Guardian. The manager of the new Llynfi forge at that time, Thomas Jones, had a reputation for producing ‘superior’ iron. He had gained experience of iron making in Sweden and was evidently an innovative forge manager. Jones held patents for the improvement of iron manufacturing and, from correspondence in The Mining Journal, he was conducting experiments with Plant’s [puddling] Process in the early 1850s. In July 1856, the works manager, Charles Hampton, took out a patent to improve the processing of iron in the puddling and refining furnaces. A very limited classification of the iron produced at the South Wales works, drawn up some years later, in the early 1870s, gives some impression of the quality of Llynfi iron. Samuel Griffiths’ ‘Guide to the Iron Trade of Great Britain,’ published in 1873, lists twenty-nine ironworks in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire of which four produced ‘Best Grey Forge’ iron, three works produced ‘Good Grey Forge’ and the remaining twenty-two made ‘Grey Forge.’ The Llynfi Works was one of the three manufacturing ‘Good Grey Forge’ iron, the other two were the Tondu and Cwmavon works. There thus seems to have been an emphasis on iron quality at the works which, along with low production costs, helped the company to survive during periods of low prices for iron. Two other important reasons for the survival of the works during the 1850s were the financial structure of the company and the wealth of William Mitcalfe. As only nineteen shareholders had invested in the enterprise in 1852, unlike some speculative ventures in the South Wales iron trade, all the shares in the Llynvi Vale Iron Company were fully paid up when the company was registered in January 1853. There was thus no need to make ‘calls’ on shares to numerous shareholders who often reserved their stake in a company with a 10%

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deposit on their shares. Also, it seems that some of the Llynfi shareholders were prepared to support the venture with cash advances during recessions in the iron trade. Two such investors were James Cavan and Charles McGarel who, after William Mitcalfe, seem to have been the key shareholders in the Llynfi Works during the late 1840s and during the 1850s. Both men had made considerable fortunes as merchants in the Caribbean during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. James Cavan was a Barbados merchant and Charles McGarel had commercial interests in Demerara on the north coast of South America. From information provided by the Barbados Museum and Historical Association it is possible to trace the career of James Cavan. He was born in south-west Scotland in 1771 (probably in the Kirkmaiden district of Wigtownshire), and began his commercial career in Alexandria, Virginia, in the early 1790s. By 1797 he had settled in Barbados and, in that year, he established a trading company on the island in partnership with his younger brother, Michael; the brothers traded as Michael Cavan & Company. The enterprise flourished during the first quarter of the nineteenth century as ‘commission merchants, ship brokers and general agents.’ As the Barbados venture expanded, the Cavans operated their own merchant ships and founded a branch of the business in the City of London which traded as Cavan Bros. & Company. In 1829 James Cavan retired from the Barbados venture, and, after Michael Cavan’s death in 1832, he inherited a large part of his brother’s estate. From the early 1830s until the late 1850s he was the principal partner in Cavan Bros. & Company. In the late 1830s James Cavan was also a founder of both the Colonial Bank and the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. In August 1843 he was listed as a shareholder in the Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company, and in September 1845 he was a member of the Provisional Committee set up to promote the Demerara Railway, the first in South America. In the mid 1840s he invested £15,000 in the Llynvi Iron Company, (about £800,000 at present-day values), and increased his shareholding to £18,750 in the mid 1850s. After James Cavan`s death in March 1859, his ‘reputed son’, Lieutenant-Colonel Philip

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Cavan, became a major shareholder in the Llynfi enterprise. Due to the wide-ranging commercial activities of James Cavan, the Cavan name is commemorated today by street names in locations over 4,000 miles apart: Cavan Row in Maesteg, and, its Caribbean namesake, Cavan Lane in Bridgetown, Barbados. James Cavan’s nephew, Michael McChlery, was a director of the Llynfi company during the late 1840s and was the chairman of the Demerara Railway Company during the same period. McChlery was also an agent for a number of James Cavan’s enterprises in the West Indies and was probably Cavan’s representative on the Llynfi Board of Directors from 1845 to 1852. On a number of occasions between 1844 and 1851 it was reported in The Times that McChlery and Alexander Macgregor, the Llynvi Iron Company chairman and a member of the West India Committee, were members of deputations to the Colonial Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer regarding the British Government’s policies in the Caribbean. From notices in The Times McChlery and Macgregor were also directors of the unsuccessful Trinidad Railway Company in 1846. Another key proprietor, Charles McGarel, was born in Larne, Northern Ireland, in 1795, the son of a shoemaker. His considerable fortune had been made during the 1820s and 1830s in Demerara, part of present-day Guyana. From the limited amount of evidence available, McGarel seems to have been a successful merchant in the sugar trade in the colony. Charles McGarel probably returned to Britain in the late 1830s. He bought Magheramorne House in Larne in 1842 and, shortly afterwards, invested £10,000 in the Llynvi Iron Company. Like James Cavan and Michael McChlery, he was actively promoting the Demerara Railway in 1845. McGarel increased his shareholding to £12,500 in the mid 1850s

and was still

a major shareholder in the late 1860s when he was described as a ‘wealthy West Indian merchant.’ After his death in 1876, Charles McGarel’s fortune passed to his brother-in-law, Sir James Hogg, who adopted the McGarel surname. Another of McGarel’s brothers-in-law was Quintin Hogg, the grandfather of the late Quintin McGarel Hogg (formerly Lord Hailsham). In common with a number of his fellow investors, Charles

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McGarel was commemorated with a local street name. Toncwd Row, originally built for the workforce at the Coegnant Spelter Works in the 1830s, was renamed McGarel Row for a number of years in the mid-Victorian period before reverting to its original name in the 1880s. Due to the Caribbean connection with the valley’s iron industry, there was a possible link between the Llynvi Iron Company and the Demerara Railway Company during the late 1840s. James Cavan and Charles McGarel, both major Llynfi shareholders, were members of the Provisional Committee that established the railway company in September 1845 and Cavan’s nephew, Michael McChlery, a Llynfi director, was chairman of the Demerara company from 1846 to 1851. As there are, apparently, no iron company records in existence, it is not possible to verify any suggestion that Llynfi iron was supplied to the first railway in South America. However, perhaps significantly, Cavan, McGarel, McChlery and probably Macgregor were closely involved with both the Demerara Railway Company and the Llynvi Iron Company when rail production began at Maesteg in 1846. It seems, therefore, that the Llynvi Vale Iron Company could rely on the support of some of the wealthier merchants in the City of London during recessions in the iron trade. James Cavan, for example, left an estate of £500,000 in 1859, about £31 million at present-day values. Compared to some other South Wales iron companies, the generation of capital and the management of the enterprise were thus relatively straightforward. William Mitcalfe, for example, could control the fortunes of the works with the support of a very small number of wealthy shareholders. William Mitcalfe was born in Tynemouth, Northumberland in 1787. His father, William Mitcalfe Snr. was a prominent landowner and ship owner in that district. In the early nineteenth century, William Mitcalfe Snr., his wife, Margaret, their six daughters and three sons lived at Tynemouth House, a substantial mansion in the expanding coastal resort. After his mother’s death in 1828 (his father had died the previous year), William Mitcalfe, then forty-one, inherited ‘all his [father’s] messuages, lands, tenements, all his monies, mortgages, bonds and ships,’ a considerable fortune.

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Mitcalfe’s profession was described as a London coal factor, one of the ‘middle-men’ who arranged transactions between the coal-owners (who were mainly from north east England), and the London coal merchants. As the firm of ‘William Mitcalfe’ was a major operator in the London coal trade in 1816, it appears that he had successfully developed his own career before inheriting his father’s wealth. By 1836, when Mitcalfe was described as a ‘coal factor for twenty-nine years and an extensive ship owner,’ he was a prominent figure at the London Coal Exchange and a leading member of the Coal Factors’ Society. He was a director of the LJSB in the early 1840s, and a director-in-England of the Paris-Lyon Railway Company in 1845. During the early 1840s, when William Mitcalfe became involved with the Llynfi Valley iron industry, the traditional role of the coal factor was changing. Large quantities of coal were reaching the London market by rail, and coalfields outside the North East were beginning to supply the city’s growing demand for fuel. During this period of adjustment and change in the London coal trade, Mitcalfe, who was described at the time as ‘always a stubborn individualist,’ disagreed with the Coal Factors’ Society over its policy regarding factorage rates. As a result, he resigned from the Society in June 1845, and it seems possible that changing conditions in the coal trade may have prompted Mitcalfe to turn his attention to the iron industry in the Llynfi Valley. Some years later, in a letter to the editor of the Bridgend Chronicle, in February 1860, he refers, rather vaguely, to the beginnings of his long association with the Llynfi Works: I was led into the speculation about 20 years ago, by a “friend,” who is well-known at the Llynvi Vale Iron Works; he is not a shareholder now, for he got out soon after I became a proprietor. The identity of the person ironically referred to as a “friend” is not clear. On the face of it, it could have been Dr John Bowring as, in 1860, he was still well-known in the district. However, Mitcalfe was probably involved with the Cambrian company before Dr Bowring

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appeared on the scene, and, as William Mitcalfe was a director of the LJSB, it is probable that the mineral wealth of the Llynfi Valley was initially drawn to his attention via his association with the bank. During the 1850s Mitcalfe was the key figure in the urban and industrial development of Maesteg. He had a 34% holding (410 shares worth £41,000) in the Llynvi Vale Iron Company in 1853, and by 1860 he had invested more than £120,000 in the Llynfi Works over a twenty-year period with limited returns. Such a sum would be the equivalent of £5½ million at present-day values. As a measure of his importance in the valley he was invited to ‘cut the first sod’ to mark the beginnings of the Llynvi Valley Railway in 1858. Stephen Wright Mitcalfe (or Metcalfe), one of his eight sons, became involved with the ironworks in the late 1840s; he was a director of the company in 1853, aged twenty-seven, and chairman from about 1858 to 1865. William Mitcalfe’s association with the Llynfi Valley was remarkable for its continuity and commitment. Many of the earlier investors in first of all the Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company, then the Llynvi Iron Company, fell by the wayside; Mitcalfe, however, carried on regardless of very low dividends and frequent losses. The reasons for his long-term interest in the Llynfi Valley iron industry are not clear as there is very little documentary evidence relating to Mitcalfe and his role as Llynfi Valley ironmaster. He obviously had a personal fortune that allowed him to survive the frequent downturns in the iron trade, and he undoubtedly had a responsible approach to the welfare of the six thousand or so who were dependent on his iron company. A key reason was probably an expectation of higher profits with the eventual opening of the long awaited steam-hauled Llynvi Valley Railway (LVR). In the original Act of Parliament that authorised the establishment of the LVR (August 8 1846), Mitcalfe was listed as a subscriber and a director of the railway company. A year later, another Act of Parliament authorised the amalgamation of the newly-formed Llynvi Valley Railway Company with the DLPR. Before the amalgamation, the original intention was to construct a broad-gauge locomotive railway from Maesteg, via Tondu and Kenfig Hill, to a

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junction with the proposed South Wales Railway at Margam. A number of the original promoters of the LVR, for example William Mitcalfe and Dr Bowring, were also major shareholders in the Llynvi Iron Company. It is likely, therefore, that Mitcalfe’s considerable investment in the Llynfi Valley, which was probably triggered by the ‘railway mania’ of the mid 1840s, was part of an attractive double speculation to produce railway iron for a booming market and to build a local railway through a rich mineral district. As plans for the LVR were suspended in the trade recession of the late 1840s, and Mitcalfe had invested such a large sum in the iron company, he was permanently on the horns of a dilemma. He could cut his losses, close the works and forfeit his capital, or absorb further losses and wait for a change of fortune with the opening of the Llynvi Valley Railway. William Mitcalfe seems to have taken the latter option and was thus largely responsible for the development of the valley from 1848, when Bowring left the district, until his death in 1863 For most of his career as a London coal factor William Mitcalfe lived in the Croydon-Carshalton district of Surrey. During his later years he lived at Down House Clifton, Bristol and he also owned the Hill House Estate, Mangotsfield, Bristol. In 1861 Mitcalfe bought the West Layton Estate in north Yorkshire for £24,000. He made frequent visits to Maesteg and was a well known figure in ‘Glamorgan Society.’ He died at Mangotsfield on April 8 1863, aged seventy-six. His son, Stephen Wright Metcalfe, was in financial difficulties by 1865, despite inheriting one third of his father’s estate. The remnants of that estate were sold off in 1875 when thirty-one houses in Tynemouth and in North Shields, together with large parcels of land in Tynemouth, were put up for sale. The bankruptcy of Stephen Metcalfe and the end of the Metcalfe family’s link with the iron trade in the Llynfi Valley were reported in the Birmingham Daily Post in May 1865: We have to record this week the failure of Mr [Stephen] Metcalfe, the Chairman of the well-known Lynvi (sic) Vale Company in Wales, whose iron has established a good reputation in this market. Mr Metcalfe is highly esteemed by the highest circles of the trade in

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London. His failure is caused by the depreciation of cotton…...much sympathy is expressed in London for Mr Metcalfe, whose late father was prominently and honourably associated with the Llynvi Vale. The failure will in no way affect the stability of the Llynvi Iron Company, Mr Metcalfe has, of course, resigned its presidency. The Metcalfe (or Mitcalfe) family name is commemorated today in Metcalfe Street, Caerau, which was probably built in the late 1840s. Forty-seven houses in the street are listed in the 1851 Census and there were 291 residents. Of the forty-seven heads of household, 38% were colliers and 40% were iron miners. Evidently the housing was built by the Llynvi Iron Company for its employees in the nearby coal and black-band workings of the Coegnant district. By the early 1860s the upper Llynfi Valley was being transformed from a collection of iron works’ settlements into a sizeable urban area with its own Board of Health and an element of town planning. The wealth of William Mitcalfe, probably created in Northumberland and London, and reinvested in the Llynfi Valley, was a major reason for that transformation. Mitcalfe’s contribution to the development of the valley was acknowledged in a report in the Bridgend Chronicle in February 1860, when the threat of closure hung over the Llynfi Works: We much regret to state, which we do upon good authority, that there is some probability of the furnaces of the Llynvi Iron Works, Maesteg, which are very extensive, being blown out. Should the works be continued, we are informed that it will be through the means of Mr William Mitcalfe. At the same time, in February 1860, Mitcalfe, in a letter to the editor of the Bridgend Chronicle, referred to his efforts to keep the works open in 1857:

…but for further advances of capital about three years ago the blast furnaces would have been blown out and smoke no longer seen in the valley. In such case the aristocracy, or rather our landlords,

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would have lost their present income of £7,700, and about 6,000 mouths would have been driven to seek bread elsewhere. …………………………………

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6. Years of Rapid Change: 1861-69.

After the difficulties of the late 1850s, a more successful period for the company began in 1861 with the opening for mineral traffic of the Llynvi Valley Railway, a broad-gauge locomotive railway. A year later the Llynvi Vale Iron Company bought up the Maesteg Works across the valley. The new purchase gave the Llynfi Works full access to the considerable coal and ironstone reserves previously worked by R.P. Lemon & Company. The take-over of the Maesteg site was greeted with great enthusiasm in the valley, a correspondent in the Bridgend Chronicle commented: …with the excellent management, the extensive capital at command and the large forges and mills of the Llynvi Company, we must fervently trust this fresh acquirement will prove a great boon to masters and men. With its improved transport links, the Llynfi Works seems to have prospered through the first half of the 1860s producing a wide range of iron goods. Because of a legal dispute between the Llynvi Vale Iron Company and the Llynvi Valley Railway over toll charges, a rare record exists of iron traffic along the newly opened railway in August-September 1861. During a six-week period from 10 August to 21 September, a weekly average of 456 tons of iron was transported along the railway from the Llynfi Works; 93% of the iron was carried to the main line at Bridgend and 7% to the port at Porthcawl. During the same period a weekly average of ninety-one tons of iron ore was transported to the Llynfi Works; 92% of the ore was transferred from Porthcawl and 8% from the main line at Bridgend. Significantly, very little finished iron passed through the port of Porthcawl and iron ore imports were only moderate in 1861. The newly-opened railway gave the Llynfi Works access to the national rail network, and the expanding port of Cardiff, via the junction with the South Wales Railway at Bridgend. As a consequence Cardiff became the main port for the Llynfi district by the mid 1860s at the expense of the inadequate harbour at Porthcawl.

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Although the latter harbour was redeveloped in 1866-7, it was only when the local railway gauges were standardised, some years later in 1872, that the iron trade at Porthcawl dock enjoyed something of a revival. It was probably after the introduction of steam locomotives on the LVR that significant amounts of hematite, from the Mwyndy iron mine fifteen miles away, began to be used in the Llynfi blast furnaces. The mining engineer William Habakkuk, writing in 1872, referred to the qualities of Llynfi iron: A mixture of two thirds of these [local] ores with one third hematite, worked at the Mwyndu Mine near Llantrisant, produces pig iron of great tenacity applicable for the manufacture of armour plates, sheet iron and other purposes requiring more than ordinary fibre……these [local] ores blended with hematite……have been the supply of the Llynvi furnaces and from which some of the finest iron in South Wales is produced. An element of prosperity had thus returned to the works by the early 1860s. John Thomas, the new furnace manager, increased the weekly yield of the No.2 blast furnace to 163 tons in 1860, an improvement of 22%. Presumably similar improvements were made to the other Llynfi furnaces. The year 1860 also marked the beginning of John Phanuel Roe’s association with the Llynfi Vale Iron Company. J.P. Roe (1814-88) was an innovative mechanical engineer who took charge of the Llynfi site after the death of Charles Hampton. In later years he played a major role in the development of the Consett Iron and Steel Works in County Durham. Roe was born in Ireland and moved to England in 1829. After completing his studies in Salisbury he settled in South Wales and was an assistant engineer at the Dowlais Works in 1835. As his career developed he became Chief Engineer, successively, at the Rhymney, Beaufort and Cyfarthfa works before his appointment as General Manager at Maesteg. During his time at the Llynfi Works he designed and built the branch lines and bridges that connected the Llynfi site to the newly-opened Llynfi Valley

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Railway, and re-modelled the works. He also designed and built rolling mill machinery for the Llynfi Vale company which was advanced for the time. For example, Roe’s design for a rod mill at the works included what was probably the first direct-acting mill engine in the country. He also revived the production of coal and coke at the newly acquired Maesteg Works in 1862 and, by 1864, the Llynfi site seems to have been working at full capacity. Shipping lists for the port of Cardiff, published weekly in The Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, give an insight into the Llynfi operation in 1864 and 1865. In the former year, four furnaces were in blast and there must have been great demand for iron in the forges and mills as 3,500 tons of pig iron were imported by the Llynfi company, mainly from suppliers in Cumbria, Glasgow and Middlesborough. Around 12,000 tons of iron ore were imported, almost all of it from Whitehaven in Cumbria. The shipping lists also show that just over 3,000 tons of Llynfi iron bars were exported from Cardiff during 1864. Four furnaces remained in blast during 1865; in that year, from the Cardiff shipping lists, very little pig iron was imported for the Llynfi Works, and about 9,000 tons of iron ore were imported, again mainly from Whitehaven, Cumbria. A greater tonnage of Llynfi iron bar was exported from Cardiff in 1865; 4,874 tons compared with 3,195 tons in 1864. During the mid 1860s the export trade of the Llynvi Vale Iron Company was dominated by the southern Italian market. Over the two-year period 1864-5, of the total tonnage exported by the company via Cardiff, 68% was shipped to Italy and 26% to Turkey. During those two years, of the total tonnage of Llynfi iron exported, 31% was dispatched to Palermo in Sicily, 14% to Naples, and 18% to Smyrna (present-day Izmir) in Turkey. For the home market, according to Webster’s Directory for 1865, the works produced pig iron, bar and rails. In addition, angle iron, gas strip, hoops, sheets and nail rods were manufactured for the metalworking districts of the Midlands. The company probably supplied the important market for iron in the Midlands through the firm of Charles Ryland & Son of Birmingham, metal merchants. This seems likely as some years later, in 1873, Rylands were advertising in trade journals that they were the sole agents in south Staffordshire

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for the Llynfi company’s ‘well-known brand of Welsh bars.’ One market in particular, the supply of wrought iron to cable (chain) makers in Cheshire and the Midlands, seems to have been well-served by the Llynfi works. A number of references, from a range of sources, confirm the importance of the cable iron trade for the Llynfi company. In the late 1850s a Parliamentary Select Committee began gathering information regarding the quality and reliability of cable-iron. References to the Llynvi Vale Iron Company, in the evidence presented to the Committee in February 1860, throw some light on the significant role played by the Llynfi works in the supply of suitable iron for heavy chain making. A major buyer of Llynfi iron was Henry Wood and Co., chain makers of Saltney, Cheshire. When asked by a Committee member what was the best iron for heavy-duty marine chains, Henry Wood, the proprietor, replied: That is No.3 best cable iron; I find that we purchased a large quantity a year and a half since from the Llynvi Vale Iron Company, for which we paid 30s extra; that is what we call extra No.3 iron. I had a large quantity of cables to make for the Peninsular and Oriental Company, and for Messrs.Wigram & Sons, for four vessels for the Turkish Government; and we purchased this iron after trying it……….We made some short lengths of chain and broke some of that [Llynfi] and some of John Bradley & Company’s, of Stourbridge, which is very celebrated iron, for which we pay £12 per ton. The Llynvi Iron Company’s iron would be about £8 a ton; we found that their iron broke at 55 per cent above the navy test…… Generally the Llynvi Company charge 20s and 30s [above the best iron]; we buy a great deal of their 20s extra. As a measure of the quality of Llynfi iron, from evidence presented to the Committee, good quality cable-iron at that time failed at between 20% and 30% above the limit laid down in the Admiralty test; Llynfi iron failed at plus 55%. Further references to the significance of the production of cable iron at Maesteg are found in the Letter Books of the Dowlais Iron

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Company and in the pages of the Birmingham Daily Post in the mid 1860s. In October 1864 it was noted by the Dowlais company that: Staffordshire chain makers are supplied by Plymouth [Merthyr Tydfil] and Llynvi with large quantities of bar iron that is called ‘Navy Quality.’ This will stand the government test for chains. In June of the following year, a correspondent in the Birmingham Daily Post reported that: With regard to chain cable iron it is a significant fact and one worthy of consideration of our Staffordshire makers, that the Lynvi (sic) Vale Company is sending enormous quantities of this kind of iron which is being consumed under the smoke of the chimneys of our Staffordshire iron masters, and no doubt this Welsh iron stands the Government tensile test, for if otherwise the highly respectable chain makers using it would prefer Staffordshire. In the mid 1860s thus, with improved transport links and another upturn in the iron trade, the Llynfi Works was in full production. In a remarkable series of articles in the Bridgend Chronicle, a correspondent, writing under the pen-name Pro Bono Publico, lamented the expansion of the works and its negative impact on the working people, the landscape and the vegetation of the district. In one of the articles he (or she) gives a vivid impression of a large iron works in full production in a valley setting: …Casting a glance in the lap of the valley, the attention is immediately riveted, and the mind absorbed in contemplating the vast magnitude of the Llynvi Iron Works, with its complication of departments, its blast furnaces, its innumerable stacks &c. belching out huge volumes of smoke which hang with foreboding gloom as a nightmare over the valley. During this period of relative prosperity, George Moffatt MP became the dominant figure at the Llynfi Works. After the death of

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William Mitcalfe and with Stephen Metcalfe in financial difficulties, Moffatt seems to have built up his shareholding by acquiring most of the Mitcalfe shares. He became chairman of the venture in 1866. In that year, under new management, the enterprise was restructured and, in December 1866, the eleven remaining shareholders unanimously decided to ‘register the company with limited liability.’ The re-formed enterprise traded as The Llynvi Coal and Iron Company Limited from May 1867, with an increased capital of £300,000. George Moffatt and Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Charles Cavan, the son of James Cavan, were by far the largest shareholders. From his 1861 Census entry, Philip Cavan was born in Guadeloupe, West Indies, in 1817. At the time of the Census he was living with his wife and two young children at James Cavan`s former home at 8 Park Crescent, Regent`s Park. From the limited amount of biographical information available, Cavan joined the 30th. (Cambridgeshire) Regiment of Foot as a seventeen year old Ensign in December 1834. He remained with the 30th throughout his Army career, rising, with seniority, to the rank of Captain in April 1841 and Major in July 1847. As a wealthy ‘gentleman-soldier’ in the years before Cardwell`s reform of the British Army in the 1870s, he was able to purchase the command of the 30th Regiment in May 1852, hence his rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Eighteen months later, in December 1853, Cavan retired from the Army by the sale of his command of the regiment and, in 1855, he became a shareholder in the Llynvi Vale Iron Company with a significant investment of £4,000. At that time he was also a partner in the City firm of Cavan Bros & Company. In the 1861 Census he was described as a ‘Lt Col. H.M. Service, Retired, Merchant’ and was the head of a large household with ten servants. After James Cavan’s death in 1859, he seems to have inherited most of his father’s considerable fortune and his father’s shareholding in the ironworks. He also acquired some of the Mitcalfe shares in the early 1860s. By 1867 thus, the Colonel was a major shareholder in the re-structured Llynfi Coal and Iron Company with 32% of the shares. Only George Moffatt (42%) had a larger shareholding in the venture at that time. George Moffatt was born in London in 1806, and, at the time of

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the formation of the Llynvi Vale Iron Company in 1852, he appears to have been a man of considerable wealth with homes in Eaton Square, Belgravia and at St Leonard’s Hill, Windsor. In addition to his interests in the Llynfi Valley, he was a partner in Moffatt & Co., wholesale tea dealers of London and Liverpool. During the 1860s Moffatt & Co. was the second largest tea-trading enterprise in Britain. Like William Mitcalfe, Moffatt was born into a wealthy family; his father, William Moffatt, was an ‘eminent London merchant’ who had built up the family tea-trading venture in the early nineteenth century. George Moffatt also had a long parliamentary career, representing four constituencies over a period of twenty-three years (1845-1868). He had been Liberal MP for Dartmouth (1845-52), for Ashburton (1852-59), and for Honiton (1860-65). He was MP for Southampton (1865-8) when he became the chairman of the Llynfi company. From the very limited amount of information available about his early career, Moffatt seems to have been closely associated with a number of prominent political figures during the early Victorian period. He played an important role as treasurer of the ‘Mercantile Committee,’ an influential group of twelve London merchants formed, in 1838, to promote Rowland Hill’s proposals for a ‘Penny Post’ and the reform of the British postal system. He was an associate of Hill, and a friend and ‘the closest financial adviser’ of Richard Cobden, the anti Corn Law campaigner. Moffatt was also a friend and a parliamentary colleague of James Morrison MP of Basildon Park, Reading, a wealthy merchant and landowner. In 1856, at the age of fifty, Moffatt married Morrison’s eldest daughter, Lucy. Why George Moffatt became involved with the iron trade in Maesteg is not clear. An explanation could lie with Dr John Bowring. As the Doctor also had close links with Rowland Hill, Richard Cobden and James Morrison, it is possible that Moffatt also knew Bowring and was persuaded by him to invest in the Llynvi Iron Company in the mid 1840s. George Moffatt’s first years as chairman of the Llynfi company were far from prosperous. There was a two-month strike by furnacemen and puddlers early in 1867 and a reduction in wages in

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January 1868. In 1866 the company attempted to boost profits by resorting to a particularly harsh form of the truck system. Truck had been reinstated at the Llynfi Works in 1853; the re-introduction, just ten years after the reforms of Dr Bowring, became a major issue in South Wales during the summer of that year. From the letters to the editor of The Cambrian it would appear that the Llynvi Iron Company had re-opened a company store in 1852, on ‘ready-money principles’, in response to a petition from the workforce. The petitioners complained of high prices in local shops and requested the company to intervene and supply goods at reasonable prices. However, during 1852-3, the newly opened company shop was not supported by the workforce, so it seems the men and their families were compelled to use the store. Truck was therefore introduced by the newly formed Llynvi Vale Iron Company in 1853. An Anti Truck Association was formed in the district and a strike was called at the end of April in protest at the re-introduction of truck. The plans to re-establish truck attracted the attention of Robert Parry (Robyn Ddu), an anti-truck campaigner, who addressed, in Welsh, a crowd of 2,000 in Maesteg in May. After a ten-week struggle, the workforce conceded defeat and the company shop once again dominated the commercial life of the township. It is not clear what kind of truck system was employed at the Llynfi Works, but it survived until an evidently more oppressive system was introduced under the chairmanship of George Moffatt, in 1866. The endorsement of truck by Moffatt, a Liberal MP, gives some indication of the desperate need to increase revenue at the works at that time. During the mid 1860s, at a time when many companies had moderated or abolished the truck system, it went from strength to strength in the Llynfi Valley. The detail of the system was fully described in a well-publicised court case in April 1869. Although there was legislation in place to control truck, the system could flourish as companies were rarely challenged in the courts by a workforce frightened of dismissal. A Maesteg tinsmith, Thomas Pillar, courageously challenged the legality of the Llynfi truck System; the case, Thomas Pillar vs. The Llynvi Coal and Iron

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Company Ltd., was tried at the Bristol Spring Assizes. The Llynfi Works’ shop had operated under the management of George Saunders until 1866 when the iron company entered into an agreement with a Mr Brittan who took over the running of the store. Brittan invested a sum of £2,000 in the shop and the iron company put up £4,000. It was decided that Brittan would take a third of the profits and the Llynfi enterprise two thirds. The workmen were given cards marked ‘Llynvi Forges and Mills’ with the employee's name and number included on the reverse side. After completing a week's work a cross would be punched through the workman's card. At the end of long periods of up to nine weeks, payment would be made in the form of cheques which could either be cashed at the bank in Bridgend or used in the company shop which, ostensibly, traded as Brittan and Company. In the shop every pound presented in cheque form was exchanged for sixteen shillings worth of overpriced goods and four shillings were given in change. Other deductions, for the sick fund, school etc. were also made before the cheques were issued to the workmen. In between long pays employees could have cheques on account only if they used them in the store. Advances between long pays were recorded on the workers’ cards. On the face of it the company could argue that employees were able to receive their wages in cash if they chose to make the eighteen mile round trip to the bank in Bridgend. The reality was very different. Called as a witness, George Parker Hubbuck, who was the Managing Director at the Llynfi Works for a short period in 1866-67, explained what happened if a workman did not take his cheque to the shop: ‘the agent or head of the department, such as the coal viewer, the engineer, the furnace manager, or the like would remonstrate with the man upon the impropriety of his conduct.’ When asked what would happen to the man if he still did not want to use his cheque in the shop, Hubbuck replied: ‘if he persisted and was very obstinate, and set a bad example, he would be discharged.’ The plaintiff, Thomas Pillar, was unusual in that he was not a full-time employee at the works but a craftsman who worked part-time for the company producing pots and pans, presumably for the company shop. He was, however, paid in the same way as the rest of

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the workforce. Due largely to the evidence of George Parker Hubbuck a verdict for Thomas Pillar was given, although Mr Prideaux QC, counsel for the Llynfi company, was granted Rule Nisi and the final judgement was deferred to the Court of Common Pleas. Three months later on 6 July, that Court decided that the Llynfi company had contravened the Truck Act of 1831 as its system of payment, linked with the Company Shop, was coercive for the workforce. The Court also ruled that it was illegal for the company to make compulsory deductions for schools and medical care. However, shortly before that final verdict the Llynfi company announced that it had abolished the truck system in Maesteg and closed the company shop.

A year or so later, in September 1870, a Mr. Henry Hyde was in charge of the former company shop, operating as an independent trader. The Llynvi Coal & Iron Company still issued promissory notes (or ‘negotiable orders’) instead of cash, and still paid the workforce at intervals of nine weeks. The difference after the Thomas Pillar affair was that the company had no involvement in the running of the store and local shops readily accepted the promissory notes issued by the company, giving change when purchases were made. The case brought by Thomas Pillar was one of a number of challenges to the truck system in the late 1860s. The cases prompted the Government to set up a Commission in 1870 to investigate the extent of truck in South Wales. Although Mr. Cole Q.C. (representing Thomas Pillar) had stated early in the trial that: ‘for the honour of the Principality I am happy to say that the defendants’ was the only company that now carried on that system,’ various forms of the truck system lingered on into the 1870s in Wales. It is probable that the methods of the Llynfi company referred to in the case, represented the last Welsh example of such an extreme form of the truck system. The end of the truck system marked the beginning of the development of Maesteg as a shopping and market centre. During the 1860s other changes occurred which further marked the transition of the Maesteg district from a collection of iron company townships to

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a distinctive urban area with a growing range of services. From the late 1850s to the 1880s the development of the town was largely controlled by the Cwmdu Board of Health which was set up in 1858. As a measure of the growing importance of the Llynfi Valley as a population centre, the Cwmdu Board was one of the first to be established in Glamorgan. Of the industrial districts in the county, only the Boards at Merthyr (1850) and Aberdare (1854) were set up earlier. Before the Board of Health was established there were few building controls and little or no attempt at any kind of town planning. After 1858 the construction of new buildings and extensions had to receive the permission of the Board, lodging houses were monitored, and the drainage of Bowrington Street (present-day Commercial Street) and other parts of the township was gradually improved. The improvement of sewerage and the provision of clean water were the priorities for the new Board, but reforms would take decades to complete. In the older parts of the district, especially where housing had developed haphazardly, problems of drainage and water supply were acute. There had been a serious outbreak of cholera in the Maesteg district in 1849, and there was a further outbreak during September 1866 which claimed fifteen lives. The familiar street plan of the town centre of Maesteg emerged in the mid 1860s. In 1864 the Board of Health decided to re-route the Parish Road to Neath which had become impassable due to the encroaching tips of the Llynfi Works. The old Neath road followed present-day Castle Street and Treharne Row, crossing the Llynfi at the cast iron ‘Talbot Bridge’ which is still in place at the bottom of Treharne Row. The planned new road began at St David’s Church and continued through part of the ‘Plasnewydd Plantation’ before crossing the Llynfi by a new bridge. The new route was, presumably, built up as Talbot Street and Neath Road in later years.

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7. The Final Years of 'Boom and Bust', 1869-85. As well as marking the end of the truck system, the year 1869 was also significant as it marked the beginning of a period of expansion at the Llynfi Works. The expansion was the result of yet another upturn in the iron trade, increased capital investment and the energetic leadership of James Colquhoun, the works’ manager from 1869 to 1873. James Colquhoun was born in the Tollcross district of Glasgow in 1833. His father was a cashier at the nearby Clyde Ironworks where James Neilson had first developed the hot-blast process in 1828. At the time of his marriage in 1855 Colquhoun was described as a ‘clerk and surveyor.’ In 1858 he was listed as a ‘civil engineer’ and by 1862 James Colquhoun was the manager of the Clyde blast furnaces. It is probable that he held that position until he moved to Wales to manage the Llynfi Works in 1869. With his experience of hot blast techniques in a Scottish black-band iron district, Colquhoun was ideally qualified to meet the challenge of improving iron production at the Llynfi site. During the years 1869 to 1871 Colquhoun increased the make of iron by carrying out improvements to three of the four blast furnaces. The modifications are described in his paper on ‘Improvements in Blast Furnaces,’ published in the Proceedings of the South Wales Institute of Engineers in 1875. In his paper, Colquhoun confirms that three of the four blast furnaces were old-fashioned stone-faced stacks, and the fourth (No.4), was a more modern, cupola blast furnace. The three stone-built furnaces were of a similar design; they were square in plan, forty-five feet high and fifteen feet at the boshes. In his paper Colquhoun states that No.4 had been designed as a sixty foot furnace but was actually built to forty-six feet, with eighteen foot boshes. An explanation for the ‘trimming-down’ of the No.4 furnace could lie with George Parker Hubbuck who had charge of the works from Christmas 1866 to October 1867. A correspondent in the Central Glamorgan Gazette in June 1867 refers to No.4, which was probably under construction, as a sixty-three foot cupola blast

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furnace that ‘replaces an old one of 45 feet height.’ A few months later, in October, a disillusioned Hubbuck left the company after just ten months as Managing-Director. When asked about his reasons for leaving the enterprise, in the 1869 truck trial noted above, Hubbuck, a key witness for the prosecution, stated, ‘I was glad to get my money out of the concern.’ It is probable that the plans for the new sixty-foot furnace were not carried through during Hubbuck’s troubled time with the company. The year or so after his departure was an unsettled period at the works with George Moffatt MP at the helm as acting works manager. It is likely that the No.4 furnace was hastily completed with a forty-six foot stack during that time Because the boshes of No.4 had been designed for a much higher stack, the reduction of iron in the furnace was relatively inefficient. During the period 1870-1, Colquhoun remodelled the No.4 furnace with sixteen-foot boshes, the No.3 blast furnace was rebuilt and the application of hot blast to three of the furnaces was generally improved. Because of the changes, weekly output of pig iron from each of the three furnaces increased from 185 tons to 240 tons. At the time of the modifications, the three blast furnaces were supplied by local black-band ironstone with an iron content of 45-55%. Although William Habakkuk, writing at the time when Colquhoun was the manager at the works, refers to the use of Mwyndy hematite in the Llynfi furnaces, and there are records of iron ore imported via Porthcawl in 1861 and Cardiff during 1864-5, the bulk of the evidence suggests that the Llynfi Works was primarily an ore-based centre of production. The 1865 edition of Hunt’s Mineral Statistics includes an entry for iron ore production at the Llynfi Works; a figure of 71,000 tons, mostly black-band, is listed. As, at the same time, a significant regional ore producer such as the Mwyndu mine at Llantrisant was producing about 51,000 tons, the large output reflects the importance of the Llynfi district as a centre for iron ore production in South Wales. In the mid 1860s the Llynfi company was by far the largest black-band producer in Wales and was one of the largest producers of local iron ore among the South Wales iron companies. In 1867, when the company opened the No.9 Level, a daily output of 200 tons of black-band was predicted.

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Such an estimate would give an annual production figure of over 50,000 tons from that mine alone. Further evidence for the importance of local ore supply can be found in a survey of the Llynfi Valley mineral district by the mining engineer James Barrow in the Transactions the South Wales Institute of Engineers in 1873. In the article he refers to the discovery, in 1843, of ‘the valuable seams of [local] black-band ironstone which have ever since formed the great supply for the furnaces.’ Finally, as Colquhoun also emphasised the importance of black-band at the works, it is probable that 60-65% of the iron produced at the Llynfi site up to the late 1870s was derived from local black-band ironstone. Hematite could have been used in a blast furnace blend for the production of specialised iron products, and imported ore could have been used to supplement local supplies. During the early 1870s four furnaces were in blast, and, with the improvements, annual output of pig iron was probably around 44,000 tons. At that time the company was one of the major employers in Glamorgan with a workforce of 2,000. That figure was quoted in December 1870 by James Colquhoun when he gave evidence to Government Commissioners who were gathering information regarding the truck system in South Wales. Colquhoun added that of the total, about 800 were employed at the collieries and 1,200 at the ironworks. The early 1870s was the final boom period of the South Wales wrought iron trade as there was great foreign demand for bar, rails and bridge iron. The Llynfi Works seems to have reached its production peak during 1870-73; it was ranked with the larger works in South Wales and was regarded by some observers as a well-equipped modern enterprise. During this period the forges and mills were busy meeting the increasing demand for bar iron and rails. For example, from references in Ryland’s Iron Trade Circular during the early part of 1871, 230 tons of Llynfi bar iron were exported from Cardiff to Civita Vecchia (the port of Rome), 263 tons to Naples, 195 tons to Messina, Sicily and 1,050 tons to Constantinople. The rail mill was evidently in full production as, in March 1871, 1,000 tons of rails were dispatched from Cardiff to New Brunswick, and 1,061 tons of rails were exported to New York. The busiest time during this

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boom period seems to have been around July 1870. During that month a total of 2,730 tons of Llynfi iron were exported through Cardiff, including shipments of 1,000 tons of railway iron for New York, and 1,000 tons of rails for New Orleans. In summary, from listings in the ‘Shipping Intelligence’ columns of the Western Mail from January 1870 to October 1871, a total of sixty-nine cargoes of Llynfi iron were dispatched from the port of Cardiff, probably from the company’s wharf on the East Bute Dock. The cargoes added up to an export total of 17,100 tons. North America was the largest market with 37% of the Llynfi tonnage exported, 27% was exported to Greece and Turkey and 21% to southern Italy. The significant trade with southern Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, which was also referred to in the previous chapter, is difficult to explain. It could relate to a trading pattern that may have developed during the early years of the Llynfi Works when it was owned by the Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company. A key investor in that company was Niven Kerr, a partner in the leading firm of Niven Kerr and Black, merchants of London and Constantinople. It is possible that commercial links developed by the mercantile house of Kerr and Black established a market for Llynfi iron in the region. In 1872 there was further expansion at the site. A large new mill with nine puddling furnaces was opened in February of that year, an addition to the four mills and thirty-three puddling furnaces recorded for 1871. All the machinery and structural iron work, with the exception of the mill engine, were produced at the works. In the same year, 1872, the Brogden family became associated with the works. John Brogden, the founder of the firm of Brogden & Sons, had built up connections in the South Wales iron and coal trades as a successful supplier of iron ore from his properties in north west England. In the mid 1850s he decided to establish industrial undertakings in South Wales and, in partnership with his four sons, John, Alexander, Henry and James, he invested his capital in iron, coal and railway ventures in Tondu, the Ogmore Valley and Porthcawl. The firm bought up the ironworks at Tondu and promoted the Ogmore Valley Railway (OVR) from the works to the collieries

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of the Ogmore Valley; it opened for traffic in 1865. In the following year the OVR, a standard gauge line, was amalgamated with the Llynvi Valley Railway, a broad gauge track. A third rail was added to the broad gauge sections until the gauges were standardized in 1872. In 1867 the company transformed the harbour at Porthcawl into a large dock of 7½ acres with 800 yards of wharfage. In the upper Llynfi Valley, Brogden & Sons developed mineral interests at Cwmdu and Tywith in the late 1850s, and the company opened the Garth Pit in 1864. The family also had a large shareholding in the Mwyndu iron ore mine near Llantrisant. By the late 1860s therefore, the Brogdens dominated the industrial development of a considerable part of central Glamorgan. John Brogden Senior died in 1869 and, three years later, the properties of John Brogden & Sons were bought up by a joint stock venture trading as The Llynvi, Tondu & Ogmore Coal & Iron Company Ltd., which was incorporated on May 10 1872 with a capital of £550,000 in 11,000 £50 shares. Before the new enterprise was launched, the Brogdens had made an agreement with the Llynvi Coal and Iron Company Limited, in December 1871, for the purchase of that firm’s mining and iron-making properties in the Llynfi Valley. The merging of the two companies was probably inevitable as, during the late 1860s, there were occasions when the underground workings of one company encroached upon the coal reserves of the other. In 1870 the Llynfi enterprise challenged the Brogdens in the High Court, alleging that the latter company had illegally extended their coal workings at Tywith Colliery into the adjacent coal reserves of the Llynvi Coal & Iron Company. The Vice-Chancellor, Sir James Bacon, ruled in favour of the Llynfi enterprise, and the Brogdens had to compensate their neighbour or arrange an expensive appeal. In April 1871 the Brogdens decided against an appeal and a compromise was sought with the Llynfi company. As mentioned above, seven months later there was a merging of the two companies before the sale of Brogden & Sons in 1872. In an indenture drawn up between Alexander, Henry and James Brogden (the Vendors) and John Oldfield Chadwick, representing

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the new company, the terms of the 1872 sale were outlined. The Brogdens were to be paid £71,000 in cash and were allocated debentures in the new company worth £100,000 and shares worth £200,000, a 37% holding. The Llynvi Coal and Iron Company Ltd. was to receive £140,000 in cash, and debentures in the new company worth £100,000. Alexander and Henry Brogden thus became the major shareholders in the new enterprise. Other leading shareholders were James Brogden and Elphinstone Barchard, an associate of the Brogdens. Alexander Brogden was the chairman of the new venture.

The formation of the new company marked the end of George Moffatt`s direct involvement with the Llynfi Works although he continued his long association with the venture as a major debenture holder. Although Moffatt had first invested in the Llynfi Works in the mid 1840s, it was during the period 1866 to 1872 that he became a significant figure in the history of the Maesteg district. Local attitudes to George Moffatt were inconsistent to say the least. By many he was regarded as a benefactor who had ensured the survival of the Llynfi Works during 1867-8 and who readily supported many local charitable causes. Others, however, regarded George Moffatt as a negative influence through his support of the truck system in Maesteg. From press reports and letters to the editor of the Central Glamorgan Gazette during December 1868, there is some evidence to suggest that Moffatt’s involvement with truck at his Llynfi works was an issue at the hustings during the 1868 General Election campaign in his Southampton constituency. It seems that George Moffatt, the Liberal candidate who had held the seat since 1865, was charged with ‘exercising the Truck System at Maesteg.’ The claims made in the Gazette are substantiated by reports in the Hampshire Advertiser during the run-up to the election in November 1868. For example, during the nomination meeting for the election, it was reported that Major-General Samuel Tryon was continually heckled during his speech in support of Moffatt. There were cries of, “How about the Tommy shop and the trucks?” and towards the end of the speech a heckler asked, “Does Moffatt believe in the truck system? Let him pay a poor man what he earns.”

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The Southampton election of 1868 was also of interest as the contest was portrayed by George Meredith in his novel, Beauchamp’s Career (1875). In the novel George Moffatt is featured as the long-winded and non-radical Mr Cougham. Nationally, there was a substantial Liberal victory in 1868 yet Moffatt unexpectedly lost his Southampton seat. Although the precise reasons for Moffatt’s defeat are not known, the public exposure of the Liberal MP’s association with an illegal truck system would not have been helpful. After losing his parliamentary seat at Southampton, Moffatt unsuccessfully contested the Isle of Wight constituency in 1870 and Southampton in 1874. During his later years he lived at Goodrich Court, a large ‘Gothick’ mansion near Ross-on-Wye. He moved there with his young family in 1871, and was a deputy Lord Lieutenant of Herefordshire during the mid 1870s. The newly-formed iron and coal company had two centres of production. The Tondu Works which, with its associated collieries, was capable of producing about 30,000 tons of pig iron and 250,000 tons of coal per year, and the Llynfi Works, with an annual production of about 44,000 tons of pig iron and 250,000 tons of coal. A report in The Engineer was optimistic about the future of the Llynfi Works at the time of the take-over and, for a short time, the amalgamation brought positive results. Shortly before the merger, the ambitious Brogdens had gained wide-ranging contracts from the New Zealand government for the development of railways in the colony and for a programme of emigration from Britain. From reports in the Central Glamorgan Gazette during 1872-3, and from the Appendix to the Journals of the [New Zealand] House of Representatives 1872, there is some evidence that large tonnages of Llynfi rails were supplied to the Brogdens’ railway ventures in New Zealand. According to the Journals, a tender for rails submitted by the Llynvi Coal and Iron Company had been accepted in March 1872 by New Zealand Government agencies. The tender was for 3,080 tons of 40lb. rails for the 3ft 6in gauge Dunedin to Clutha railway. The contract price per ton was £10.16s.3d, free on board, London. At the end of May 1872, the Gazette was reporting that large tonnages

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of rails were leaving Porthcawl en-route to New Zealand via London. From reports in the Gazette, the merger also resulted in the diversion of the Llynfi iron trade from Cardiff to the Brogdens’ dock at Porthcawl. That trading trend away from the port of Cardiff was reflected in the ‘Shipping Intelligence’ columns of the Western Mail during 1872. From January to April of that year 2,205 tons of iron were shipped by the Llynfi company through Cardiff, but no exports were listed from May to December. The last large Llynfi cargo to leave Cardiff in 1872 suggests an interesting link with the Rio Grande Railway (RGR) near the Texas-Mexico border. On April 10, 1,210 tons of Llynfi rail iron were shipped to the port of Brazos. At about the same time the twenty-two mile 3ft.6in. gauge RGR was under construction from the coast near Brazos to Brownsville, Texas, and it is possible that the Llynfi works supplied much of the railway iron for the line. Despite these encouraging trends the years after 1873 were to prove disastrous for the Welsh wrought iron industry. At the Llynfi Works, like many in South Wales, production costs and iron prices had increased during the boom years 1870-3. In 1874 prices fell sharply as foreign producers, in Belgium for example, were capturing traditional markets for Welsh iron by supplying much cheaper bar and rails. In addition, the increasing output of cheap mass-produced Bessemer steel was beginning to seriously undermine the wrought-iron industry, especially the rail trade. Welsh ironmasters were faced with a difficult choice, they could either drastically reduce production costs and hope for an increase in orders, or make the transition to Bessemer steel-making. During 1872, for example, labour costs rose sharply as the Llynfi workforce had significant wage increases, and hours were reduced as the nine-hour day was introduced in April of that year. Although attempts were made to modernize the works, the mechanical puddling method was not adopted, yet capital was diverted into the expensive redevelopment of the Old Works. The two oldest furnaces were renovated there in 1873, but were not blown-in. As Welsh iron ore was unsuited to Bessemer steel production, only a small number

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of inland ironworks in South Wales made the transition to steel-making in the 1870s, using imported ores. For an ironworks like the Llynfi venture, which had developed because of cheaply produced local ore and was fifteen miles by rail from the nearest port, the prospects for steel production were limited to say the least. In 1874 iron prices were decreasing sharply but orders were still not forthcoming. In the spring, in an attempt to lower production costs, wages at the Llynfi Works were reduced by 10%. In May, short-time working was introduced and, in June, only fourteen of the forty-two puddling furnaces were in operation. By September only one mill was in production, using iron from the company’s stocks. The year marked a watershed for the Llynvi, Tondu & Ogmore Coal & Iron Company and the South Wales wrought-iron trade. Several works closed, all four Llynfi furnaces were recorded as being out of blast in 1874. Production was resumed on a reduced scale in October 1874, and two furnaces were kept in blast for the period 1875-7. By September 1874, only two years after acquiring the works, iron-making at the Llynfi site had become a liability for the Llynvi, Tondu & Ogmore Coal & Iron Company. During a shareholders’ meeting, concern was expressed by a group of investors from Southport, Lancashire, that dividends were only 5% when 10% had been expected. Alexander Brogden, the company chairman, went to great lengths to explain the low dividend and the relatively low annual profit of £29,700. He informed the shareholders that the results for 1874 were disappointing as the Llynfi Works had operated at a loss after making a profit of £36,000 in 1873. The significant profit for 1873 reflected the very high prices for iron during that year which seem to have offset the losses incurred when the Llynfi and Tondu workers joined a major strike in the South Wales ironworks. Although the dispute affected the region from the end of December 1872 to early March 1873, Alexander Brogden broke away from the other ironmasters and settled with his workers at the beginning of February, a month before the strike ended at the other works in South Wales. The losses at the Llynfi site in 1874 were incurred as iron stocks, expensively produced when raw material and labour costs were high,

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were sold after prices had dropped sharply, resulting in a considerable loss on sales of Llynfi iron. In addition, £12,000 had been lost due to major mechanical problems with a blast engine at the works in December 1873. Repairs proved costly and two blast furnaces had to be shut down with a consequent decrease in output. The losses at the Llynfi site were sustained by the profits made at the Tondu Ironworks and the company’s collieries. A year later, in September 1875, the profit at Tondu had fallen to £33,000 and the losses at Llynfi had increased to £19,000. As overall profits were low, dividends could not be distributed to shareholders. Because of pressure from a group of dissatisfied investors from Southport and Manchester, the company had been forced to make changes on the board of directors during 1875 in an attempt to improve returns. By the time of the fourth annual report, in August 1876, a loss of £13,446 was announced by the Llynvi, Tondu & Ogmore Coal & Iron Company. Alexander Brogden, like other ironmasters in South Wales, complained of low iron prices and high production costs. The 1876 report, presented at a shareholders’ meeting in Manchester, contains a great deal of information about the production of iron at Tondu and at the Llynfi Works. Surprisingly, with just two furnaces in blast in a trade depression, 27,100 tons of pig iron had been produced at the Llynfi site in 1875, and 29,600 in 1876. Slightly smaller amounts were produced by the two furnaces at Tondu. Only two of the Llynfi furnaces were kept in blast after 1874 as ‘the directors thought it more prudent to restrict the production than to follow the competition at ruinous prices.’ The two furnaces in blast, probably No.1 and No.2, were each producing about 300 tons of pig iron per week in 1876, an increase of about 66% on the weekly output in the late 1860s. The report also gives an indication of the markets served by the company. Although two years earlier, in May 1874, an article in The Engineer had listed the Llynfi Works among ‘the [ten] leading [South Wales] works engaged in the export of rails,’ Alexander Brogden made no reference to rail production in his report to shareholders. In 1876 the Llynfi Works was primarily a producer of pig iron and merchant bar which was sold on for further

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processing elsewhere. From the report it appears that it was the company’s customers who were suffering from foreign competition as they could no longer sell the products they made from Llynfi iron in traditional markets abroad. During the mid 1870s efforts were made to lower production costs, and the wages of colliers and black-band miners were reduced to the extent that industrial disputes were commonplace. There had been a series of stoppages at the Llynfi Valley collieries in 1875 and there was a nine-week dispute at the Dyffryn Pit which ended in April 1877. In June of that year further reductions were accepted by the men.

Welsh merchant bar iron, which sold at £13.0.0d a ton in 1873, was selling at £5.2.6d in 1877. With such low prices the company wanted further wage reductions in December 1877 in a desperate attempt to make production costs more competitive. Before the question of wage reduction developed into a major dispute, the Llynvi, Tondu & Ogmore Coal & Iron Company went into receivership. The complex reasons that led-up to that decision were explained in a company circular of 22 January 1878 which was reproduced three days later in the columns of the Central Glamorgan Gazette. Because of losses of markets, low prices for iron and relatively high production costs, the firm was unable to make interest payments to its debenture holders. This situation had become apparent in October 1877 and, at that time, the majority of the holders opted to ‘defer requiring payment for their principal and interest for twelve months’ in an attempt to ease the company’s financial problems. However in December 1877 one major debenture holder decided not to renew his bond, thus making a demand on the company for about £43,000, the value of his debenture holding. In the trade depression of the late 1870s such a payment would have pushed the company into bankruptcy with disastrous consequences for the debenture holders. As a result of the threat to withdraw the bond for £43,000, the directors, ‘after much consideration, and only under the pressure which the long-continued depression in the iron and coal trade has put upon the finances of the company, considered it would be wise to

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put the company into liquidation, with a view to financial rearrangement.’ On 31 January 1878 a meeting was convened for the debenture holders, ironically at the Terminus Hotel, Cannon St. London, and it was resolved that the company should be wound up voluntarily. After surviving a number of slumps over the previous thirty years, the Llynfi Works joined the growing list of South Wales ironworks that ceased large-scale production in the late 1870s. The key bond-holder who was not prepared to renew his company debentures and who thus precipitated the move towards voluntary liquidation, was not named in the company statement but, from the limited amount of evidence available, it was probably George Moffatt the former chairman of the Llynvi Coal and Iron Company. The press report refers to the bond-holder as ‘one of the founders of the old Llynvi company.’ In January 1878 Moffatt was the only surviving major investor, Colonel Cavan having died in 1870. Less than a month after the vote for voluntary liquidation George Moffatt died at the Imperial Hotel, Torquay at the age of seventy-two. As a result of the general trade depression during the late 1870s and the trading difficulties of the Llynfi company, the Llynfi Valley experienced levels of distress and poverty that would not be repeated until the Depression years of the 1930s. In addition to job losses at the ironworks, the company’s largest colliery, Dyffryn Madoc, closed in May 1878 with loss of 400 jobs and production was suspended at another company colliery, the Garth Pit. In an attempt to alleviate the growing problem of poverty, The Maesteg Distress Relief Committee was set up in January 1878 and twelve ‘relief districts’ were set up in the valley. In 1880, however, there were some grounds for optimism as the receiver appointed after the voluntary liquidation of the Llynfi company, John Joseph Smith, re-formed the venture as the Llynvi and Tondu Company. After the difficulties experienced at the ironworks in the mid 1870s, Smith and the new company still attempted to compete in the contracting wrought-iron trade. From the ‘Shipping Intelligence’ listings in the Western Mail, during the three year period 1878-80, 22,900 tons of Llynfi iron were exported

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through the port of Cardiff. In addition to the well-established markets served by the works in Greece and Turkey, there was a substantial trade with India. For example, of the 8,863 tons of Llynfi iron exported from Cardiff in 1880, 52% was dispatched to Bombay and 18% to Madras. During 1881 No.1 and No.2 blast furnaces were heightened to about sixty feet to reduce pig iron production costs and improve quality. In addition, the installation of Cowper hot blast stoves was considered in an attempt to reduce blast furnace fuel costs. Also, in 1880, there is some evidence from press reports that the Llynfi Works was producing hematite iron, suitable for steel making, from imported Spanish ores. Despite these efforts the Llynvi and Tondu Company announced that it could not pay dividends on ordinary shares for 1881 due to, ‘the very low price ruling for finished iron for the whole of the past year.’ However, the Report to Shareholders for the half-year to August 1882 was surprisingly up-beat about the prospects of the company. It was noted that the sinking of a new deep mine at Coegnant was making good progress, a small profit of £15,000 had been made and about 18,000 tons of bars had been produced during the half year at the Llynfi and Tondu works. This period of some confidence was short-lived as, a year later, the venture entered a period of terminal decline. Low prices for iron continued to frustrate the determined efforts of the company to lower production costs, and the bankruptcy of a key customer made the trading difficulties even worse. When Townshend Wood & Co of the Briton Ferry Ironworks failed in December 1882 considerable sums owed to the Llynvi and Tondu Co. had to be written off. The company continued to carry the burden of unprofitable iron making, with one furnace in blast, into the mid 1880s but lacked the capital to fully develop its considerable coal reserves. The extensive black-band ironstone underground workings on the eastern side of the valley were abandoned in June 1884, and iron making ended in the Maesteg district when the Llynvi and Tondu Company ceased production in 1885. In January 1887 the venture was declared insolvent when a creditor, Robert Millington Knowles of Colston

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Bassett Hall in Nottinghamshire, presented a Petition to wind up the Llynvi and Tondu Company at the High Court. John Joseph Smith was appointed Official Liquidator on 25 February 1887. More than two years later, in June 1889, most of the plant and machinery at the Llynfi site was eventually disposed of in a well-publicised sale. The largest item sold was the massive pyramid–frame beam engine installed in 1855; the purchaser was a Mr Leighton of Dudley Port in the Black Country. Thus ended the valley’s fifty-seven year association with the iron trade, an industrial development that was remarkable for a number of reasons. The survival of a large operation like the Llynfi Works through the 1850s with only a horse-drawn rail link was unusual to say the least. As well as low raw material assembly costs, a major reason for the survival of the works, certainly during the ten years after 1852, was the financial structure of the enterprise. The Llynfi Works was controlled by a handful of wealthy investors, mainly London merchants, who could accept low dividends and were prepared to absorb losses during periods of low iron prices. The expectation of lower costs and higher profits, with the advent of the long awaited Llynvi Valley Railway, was a probable reason for their long-term interest in the valley. If the venture had had large numbers of shareholders and debenture holders, as was the case after 1872, low dividends or annual losses could have resulted in a much earlier vote for voluntary liquidation. Also the Llynfi venture, in particular, was remarkable in that its establishment was based on an overestimate of local deposits of argillaceous iron ore, yet its growth was based on another local ore source, the black-band, fortuitously discovered in 1843, five years after the formation of the Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company. Without that discovery it is probable that the Llynfi Valley iron industry would have continued on a much reduced scale after the early 1840s, or it could even have disappeared at that time, after just fourteen years in production. The Llynvi and Tondu Company was eventually bought by Colonel John North and his associates. The new enterprise, which traded as North’s Navigation Collieries (1889) Ltd., was an ambitious company with the capital and the expertise to establish the

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Maesteg area as a major coal producer in the years after 1890. The ironworks site was cleared in the 1890s. The stonework from three of the furnace stacks was ‘recycled’ in the construction of St. Michael’s Church, Maesteg, in 1897. The stack of the No.1 blast furnace was left intact, apparently with the intention of using the stone for the tower of the church; it was partially dismantled when the tower was eventually added to the church in 1958. The base of the stack (now a Scheduled Ancient Monument) is located alongside the Maesteg Sports Centre. The blowing arches and the casting arch remain intact and the structure was consolidated in 1995. Before concluding this survey of the iron industry in the Llynfi Valley, mention can be made of a third large works in the district, the short-lived Garth Iron Works. Although it produced very little iron it attracted a great deal of contemporary press attention because of its spectacular production methods. The works, which was formally opened in April 1847, was developed by Malins and Rawlinson who owned ironworks at Cefn Cribwr. The new Garth venture traded as The Patent Galvanized Iron Company. The boom in iron prices and the accessible black-band ore adjoining the works on Maesteg Isaf Farm, probably prompted the ambitious scheme. Unusually, the three blast furnaces at the site were free-standing and were served by a complex system of lifts and balances. Some interesting comparisons can be made between the Garth Works and the nearby Cambrian Iron and Spelter Works which was established almost ten years before. Both were conceived at a time of high iron prices and both were never completed. On the Cambrian site, only two of the four furnaces were completed before the trade depression of the early 1840s; at Garth, the third blast furnace and the majority of the coke ovens at the site were left unfinished in the trade depression of the late 1840s. After the early initiatives of the two iron companies had largely failed, banks stepped in to support the ventures. The London Joint Stock Bank had a substantial interest in the Cambrian site, and the Garth property passed into the hands of the ill-fated Royal British Bank in about 1850 after the failure of the Patent Galvanised Iron Company and Henry Scale’s attempt to redevelop the works. By

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1850 the Garth furnaces were out of blast and there is no evidence to suggest they were ever blown in again. However, unlike the Cambrian Works, no wealthy entrepreneurs were on hand to take over and develop the site. As a result, the Cambrian, later Llynfi, Works was completed and continued in production for another thirty-five years, while the Garth Works was finally abandoned in 1856 after the spectacular failure of the Royal British Bank. The site was left to merge into the landscape after the plant was dismantled, another example of the many enterprises which were conceived at a time of high prices for iron only to fail when prices quickly collapsed.

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The Maesteg Iron Industry: An Illustrated Outline

Top: The four iron works of the Maesteg district. Garth and Cwmdu were short-lived speculations, the Maesteg Ironworks was an important producer of good quality pig iron during the mid 19C and the large integrated Llynfi Works was a major regional centre of production. Above left: the route of the DLPR, the tramway that prompted the initial industrial development of the Maesteg district.

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The Maesteg Ironworks: Illustrative Material

Top: plan of the compact Maesteg site with all three furnaces set against the hillside to allow easier top-loading with limestone, coke and iron ore. Above: production figures (tons) for the 1850s when the works was at its peak. White pig-iron, which was converted into wrought iron at other works, was the staple product at the site.

Source: Maesteg Ironworks, Woodhouse and Dobson, 1860.

Furnace Top Area. (86 coke ovens)

Cast house

No.3 BlastFurnace c.1845

Cast house

Foundry?

Blast engine houses

No.2 Blast Furnace 1831.

No.1 Blast Furnace 1828.

0 100 feet

N

Diagram based on O.S. 1:2,500 map of 1884.

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Two views of the last remnants of the ironworks before demolition in the 1960s. Top: the base of the No. 3 blast furnace stack of 1845 with casting house to the left and South Parade in the background. View from the east. Above: close-up of the remains of the casting house, view from the north-west.

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Local links to the Maesteg Ironworks.

Top: the keystone of the tramway bridge that carried a spur of the horse railway to the ironworks, over the parish road. The bridge was demolished in 1952 and the keystone, with plaque, was incorporated into the retaining wall at the junction of Castle St. and Bridge St. The stone carries the initials of the Maesteg Company and the date conveniently marks the beginning of the town of Maesteg. Above: The Talbot Bridge at the bottom of Treharne Row, cast at the Maesteg Works in 1835; a rare example of an early iron bridge still at its original location. The bridge has a span of 21ft. and the sides consist of two single castings each 22ft long with fascias 15½” x 2” and an arched rib 6”x2”. The road deck is made up of 21 cast iron ‘planks,’ supported by two longitudinal ‘T’ section cast-iron girders.

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The Llynfi Ironworks: Illustrative Material

The plan above outlines the development of the Llynfi site over a thirty year period in the mid nineteenth century. The ambitious and optimistic Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company completed the core of the works to a high architectural standard by 1840, before the slump in the iron trade in 1841 and the suspension of building at the site. When construction work resumed in 1845, the new mills and forges were less elaborate, functional structures.

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The only known visual record of the Llynfi Works in operation, July 1858. The illustration was part of a larger view of the Maesteg township that was featured in The Illustrated London News when that journal marked the beginnings of the steam-hauled Llynfi Valley Railway. The works reservoir and Nantycrynwydd farmhouse are in the foreground; the large blast engine house is shown to the right of the chimneys, and the boiler house is between the engine house and the farm. The large mills that were built c1855 occupy the middle ground and workers’ housing, in what is probably Cavan Row, forms a backdrop to the works. Such was the considerable scale of the Llynfi operation that this view of the southern end of the works shows barely one-quarter of the site. The extensive furnace-top area, the blast furnaces, casting house and forges were out of view to the left.

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A view of the blast furnaces during demolition in the mid 1890s. Although an enlarged grainy image, it provides a rare photographic record of the site. Part of the roofless casting house can be seen to the right of the base of the chimney. The spectacular structure was 300 ft long and 50 ft. wide. It was one of the first buildings to be completed on the site and its distinctive arches and stepped buttresses reflect the initial wealth and optimism of the Cambrian Iron and Spelter Co. in 1839. The large cylindrical structure on the right, behind the casting house, is the lower part of the 46 ft. No.4 blast furnace which was built in 1867, replacing the original square stone-faced stack of 1839. It was a modern cupola blast furnace and contrasts with the older No.3 furnace highlighted to the left of centre. The arch in the centre of the photograph, behind the blast furnaces, was part of the bridge house that consisted of a retaining wall from which arched ramps allowed the furnaces to be top-loaded.

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Top: Blast furnaces No.1 (left) and No.2 during the demolition of the site in the 1890s. Above: The engine house and the stack of the No.1 blast furnace during the early 1930s when the old furnace-top area (left) was being redeveloped as a welfare park. Railway sidings occupied the ironworks site for many years until the Forge Industrial Estate was built on the site in the late 1960s.

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The remains of the No.1 blast furnace stack c1956 when the stonework was being transferred to nearby St. Michael’s Church where a large tower was being added to the building. At the time of the demolition of the works in the 1890s, the furnace survived intact as it was ‘set aside’ for the church tower. The furnace was first blown-in at the end of 1849 and was 45 ft high with 15ft boshes. The photograph clearly illustrates the considerable scale of the Llynfi iron-making operation and also gives some indication of the structure of the stack. It consisted of a firebrick core encased in rubble and faced with good quality stonework. A large diameter blast main carried the air from the blowing engine in the engine house to the right, and subsidiary pipes carried the blast to the blowing arches like the one on the left. Inside the blowing arch, the blast reached the molten mass in the furnace core via narrow pipes called tuyeres.

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The application of hot blast to the furnace was first developed in Scotland by James Neilson in 1828 and, after slow beginnings, it was widely adopted by iron companies in South Wales. By heating the air blast before it entered the furnace, great savings were made on coal consumption. The Scottish connection was significant at the Llynfi site as, like many Scottish works, the Llynfi Ironworks was largely dependent on black-band ore. In addition, James Colquhoun who managed and redeveloped the Llynfi works during 1869-1873, was previously a manager at the Clyde Ironworks and came to Maesteg with a team of Scottish key-workers in the former year. In the above diagram the fairly small, earlier type of hot blast stove is shown. A small amount of coal was used to heat the stoves and further heat was provided from waste gases diverted from the top of the furnace. By way of a complex series of safety valves, the hot air was blown through the molten mass inside the furnace core via the tuyeres. At the Llynfi site there were at least three hot blast furnaces, each furnace produced about 240 tons per week in 1873.

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Top: the No.1 blast furnace and engine house in 1968. Above: The base of the furnace stack, with tapping arch, after consolidation in the mid 1990s.

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Two views of the double blast engine house at the Llynfi Works. Top: the building in 1968 before further deterioration in the 1970s. The structure survived after the demolition of the rest of the works as it became a convenient fodder store for the hundreds of pit-ponies in the valley, hence its local name of ‘the cornstores.’ Above: the engine house in 1999 after complete restoration and incorporation into the adjacent Sports Centre (opened 1983).

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Housing built by the Cambrian Iron and Spelter Co. during 1839-40, pictured in 1968. Macgregor Row in the foreground and Charles Row (behind) were completed in 1839, Cavan Row in the distance (right), was completed in 1840. At the time of the 1841 Census all three were collectively known as Cambrian Row. When the Cambrian Works was bought by the ambitious Llynvi Iron Co. in 1845, the rows were renamed after key figures in the iron company. They were: Alexander Macgregor who was chairman of the Llynfi company from 1848 to 1858, Charles Bowring the managing director at the works from 1845-1848 and James Cavan, a banker and West Indies merchant who was a key investor in the Llynfi company from 1845 until his death in 1859. Nearby, in Nantyffyllon, other housing was built by the Llynfi company later in the 1840s. John Street was named after John Bowring, company chairman 1845-48, and Brown Street after Francis Carnac Brown a key investor at the Llynfi Works, 1845-52. All the company housing, together with the ironworks, the manager’s house, the company shop and the works’ school, were known as Bowrington for many years in the mid-nineteenth century.

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Llynfi Lodge dates from 1839 and was built by the Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company for the resident works’ manager and visiting directors and investors. It was one of three large company residences in the valley. One of the others, Glan Llynfi, still survives, the third, Plasnewydd, was demolished in the late nineteenth century. The Lodge was the home of Charles Bowring 1844-48 when his brother, and company chairman Dr John Bowring, was a frequent visitor.

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The Key Investors at the Llynfi Works 1845-1872. The development of the Llynfi Ironworks during these years, and the consequent growth of the Maesteg township, was largely due to the seemingly endless supply of investment capital provided by the group of proprietors listed above. Of the five, John Bowring was the odd-one-out even though he was the high profile chairman of the Llynvi Iron Company in the 1840s. Bowring lacked the personal wealth of the others and had invested the bulk of his fortune in the Maesteg district in an attempt to generate the income he needed to sustain his political career. He lost his capital in the trade depression of the late 1840s and left the iron trade. For the others the Llynfi venture was one of many speculations they were involved with. Mitcalfe, Moffatt and Cavan in particular were very wealthy London merchants who were able to absorb losses and support the works during trade depressions.

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The Ironworks of the Maesteg District 1828-85, Site Details. Maesteg Ironworks (The Old Works) NGR: SS 856915 In Production: 1828-48, 1852-60. (Merged with Llynfi Works after 1862). Ownership: Maesteg Iron & Coal Company (better known as the Maesteg Company) 1828-36, Robt. Smith & Co.1836-41, Motley, Fussell & Co. 1841-44, Maesteg Iron Company, 1844-48, R.P. Lemon & Co. 1852-60. Workforce: 561 in 1841 (ironworks and collieries). Blast Furnaces: No.1 1828, (44ft high, 16ft. boshes); No. 2 1831, (44ft, 14ft boshes); No.3 1845, (45ft, 17ft boshes). Weekly output: 68 tons per furnace, 1835, 130 tons 1856. Coke Ovens: 86 in 1860. Pig Iron Production: 7,000 tons p.a. 1836-40, 20,000 tons 1856. Iron Ore Production: 61,000 tons 1856 (97% local black band ironstone) Llynfi Ironworks (The New Works) NGR: SS 848917 (Known as the Cambrian Works 1839-44). In Production: 1839-1885. Ownership: Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company 1839-44, Llynvi Iron Company 1845-52, Llynvi Vale Iron Company 1853-66, Llynvi Coal & Iron Co. Ltd. 1866-72, Llynvi Tondu & Ogmore Coal & Iron Co. Ltd. 1872-78, Receivership 1878-80, Llynvi & Tondu Co. Ltd. 1880-85. Workforce: 455 in 1841, 2,000 in 1870 (1,200 at the works, 800 at the collieries). Blast Furnaces: No.4 1839, No.3 1839, No.2 1845, No.1 1849. All four were 45 ft. high, 15ft. at the boshes, (No.4 replaced with a 46 ft. cupola blast furnace 1867.) Height of No.1 and probably No.2 increased to 60 ft. in 1881. Weekly output: 70 tons per furnace 1839, 110 tons 1842, 300 tons 1876. Coke Ovens: 107 in 1852 Puddling Furnaces etc. 42 puddling furnaces and 4 mills 1873. Pig Iron Production: 44,000 tons (estimate for 1872 with all four furnaces in blast), 30,000 tons 1876 with two furnaces in blast. Iron Ore Production: 71,500 tons 1865 (mainly local black band). Garth Ironworks NGR: SS 864900. In Production: 1847-50. Ownership: Patent Galvanized Iron Company. Blast Furnaces: Two completed 1847, one unfinished. Coke Ovens: 31 in 1850. Cwmdu Ironworks NGR: SS 872915. In Production:1858-59? Ownership: Charles Sheppard c1857-8, R.P. Lemon & Co. c.1858-9. Blast Furnaces: One, Coke ovens: 10 in 1860.

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Sources of Information. Published Texts and Articles.

1. George BARTLE, An Old Radical and His Brood, ( London, 1994). 2. Roger BURTON, ‘Iron Mining in the Parish of Wootton Courtenay,’ Exmoor

Mines Research Group Newsletter, (July, 1997). 3. Charles CLIFFE, The Book of South Wales, (London, 1848). 4. James COLQUHOUN, ‘Blast Furnace Improvements,’ Proceedings of the

South Wales Institute of Engineers, IX, (1874-5). 5. David DAVIES, Ty’r Llwyni, (Port Talbot, 1961). 6. Denys FORREST, Tea for the British, (London, 1973). 7. Richard GATTY, Portrait of a Merchant Prince, James Morrison 1789-1857.

(Northallerton, 1977). 8. Samuel GRIFFITHS, Guide to the Iron Trade of Great Britain, (London, 1873,

republished 1967). 9. L.S. HIGGINS, John Brogden & Sons: Industrial Pioneers in Mid-Glamorgan,

Glamorgan Historian, Vol. 10 (1974). 10. Alan G. HILL (Ed.), The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol

VII, (Oxford 1989). 11. George W. HILTON, American Narrow Gauge Railroads, (Stanford, 1990) 12. Laurence INCE, History of the Neath Abbey Iron Co., (Eindhoven, 1984). 13. Brynmor JAMES, DLPR: The Story of a Railway and its Background, (Kenfig

Hill, 1987). 14. Allister MACMILLAN, The Red Book of the West Indies, (London, 1922). 15. Dafydd MORGANWG, Hanes Morganwg, (Aberdare 1874). 16. John MORRIS, Evan Evans and the Vale of Neath Brewery, Morgannwg, IX,

(1965). 17. Donald READ, Cobden and Bright, (London, 1967). 18. Brinley RICHARDS, History of the Llynfi Valley, (Cowbridge, 1982). 19. Canon Daniel RICHARDS, Honest to Self, (Swansea, 1971). 20. Philip RIDEN, John Bedford and the Ironworks at Cefn Cribwr, (Cardiff,

1992). 21. P.RIDEN & J.G. OWEN, British Blast Furnace Statistics 1790-1980, (Cardiff,

1995). 22. H. SCRIVENOR, History of the Iron Trades from the Earliest Records to the

Present Day, (London, 1854, republished 1967). 23. Clive SMITH, Railways of the Llynfi Valley, (Port Talbot, 1985). 24. Raymond SMITH, Sea-coal for London, (London, 1961). 25. Charles WILKINS, History of the Iron, Steel, Tinplate and Other Trades of

Wales, (Merthyr Tydfil, 1903). 23. J.T. WOODHOUSE & S. DOBSON, Maesteg Iron Works, (London,1860).

Government Publications. 1. Annual Army Lists, 1835-1854, PRO (WO65). 2. Hansard`s Parliamentary Debates, 1842-43.

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3. Mineral Statistics 1856, 1865. 4. Local Act of Parliament, 9/10 Victoria Cap.cccliii: Llynvi Valley Railway Act,

1846. 5. Report of the Commission of Enquiry into The State of Education in Wales,

Part 1, 1847. 6. Report of the Royal Commission, The Employment of Children and Young

Persons in Mines and Manufactories 1842. 7. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into The Application of

Iron to Railway Structures, 1849 8. Appendix to the Journals of the [New Zealand] House of Representatives,

1872, Session I D-01a, Correspondence with the Agent General.

Contemporary Newspapers and Journals. 1. The Bridgend Chronicle. (The Reference and Information Centre, Bridgend). 2. The Cambrian. (Swansea Central Library). 3. The Cardiff & Merthyr Guardian. (Cardiff Central Library). 4. The Central Glamorgan Gazette. (The Reference and Information Centre,

Bridgend). 5. The Clifton Chronicle. (Bristol Central Library). 6. The Engineer. (National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Cardiff Central

Library). 7. The Hampshire Advertiser. (Southampton Central Library). 8. The Hereford Journal. (Hereford Central Library). 9. The Iron Trade Circular (Ryland’s) and Hardware Weekly Messenger. (British

Newspaper Library, Colindale). 10. The Mining Journal. (National Library of Wales, British Newspaper Library,

Colindale). 11. The Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers. (ICE

Library, London) 12. The Times (Digital Archive). (National Library of Wales).

Trade Directories. 1. Webster’s Directory, 1865.

Contemporary Documents. 1. Account Book, Nynehead Estate, Somerset Record Office, (DD/SF1271). 2. Blast Furnace Drawings, Neath Abbey Iron Company Collection, WGRO

(NAI/M/232) 3. The Cambrian Iron & Spelter Company: a Memorial, 8 June 1843, PRO

(C54/12916). 4. Costs of Pig Iron at Maesteg Works, 1836-1840, Mushet Correspondence,

Gloucestershire Record Office, (D2646/154). 5. Deed of Partnership, 1796, Hawkins Harrison and Company. NLW (Maybery

1, 4010). 6. Documents and Deeds of R.P. Lemon & Company, GRO (D/D Xbt5/13-25).

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7. Dowlais Iron Co. Correspondence: London House Letter Books, October-December 1864, NLW.

8. Dyffryn Llynvi & Porth Cawl Railway, Cash Book 1831-45, PRO (Rail 161/5). 9. Engine Plans, Neath Abbey Iron Company Collection, WGRO (NAI

M/532/30,31). 10. Files of Dissolved Companies, Llynvi Coal & Iron Company Ltd., PRO

(BT/31/1318/3415). 11. Files of Dissolved Companies, Llynvi, Tondu & Ogmore Coal & Iron Co. Ltd..

PRO (BT/31/1718/6258). 12. Letters of Charles Bailey, Land Agent of the Shelborne Estate at Wootton

Courtenay, West Somerset, 1835. Author’s Collection. 13. Letter from Alexander Macgregor of the West India Committee to the chairman

of the Bristol West India Committee, February 1846, Bristol Record Office, (SMV/8/3/3/9/12).

14. Letter from William Strickland Cookson to William Wordsworth, 21 December, 1842, Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, (G9/1/2).

15. Llynvi Iron Company Letters, Dec. 1844 and Dec. 1845, Jardine-Matheson Archive, Cambridge University Library, (MSJM/B1/10/P92, MSJM/B6/10/2787)

16. Llynvi Iron Company: a Memorial, 4 August 1847, PRO (C54/13566). 17. Llynvi & Tondu Company, Fourth Half-Yearly Report, GRO (D/D Xsg). 18. Llynvi Vale Iron Company, Summary of Capital and Shares, 1857, PRO

(BT41/634/3465). 19. Llynvi Vale Iron Company Vs. Llynvi Valley Railway Company, Traffic

Returns 1861, PRO (Rail 383/69). 20. The Maesteg Cast-Iron Bridge, Survey/Report of June 1981, The Institution Of

Civil Engineers, London. 21. Maesteg Iron and Coal Company, Deed of Co-partnership, 1828, WGAS (NAS

XI I/II/1-2.) 22. Maesteg Iron Works, Sale Catalogue 1848, GRO (D/D xiv2). 23. Map of the Black-band Ironstone Workings at Cwmdu, GRO (D/D HSE

2/6348). 24. Prospectus, Llynfi Valley Colliery Company, GRO (D/D Xiu). 25. Report of the Directors of the Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company, 1840,

NLW (LL/MISC/226). 26. Report on Maesteg, Margam and Other Works Belonging to Robert Smith and

Company, May 1840, Mushet Correspondence, Gloucestershire Record Office, (D2646/151,152).

27. Title Deeds of properties owned by William Mitcalfe in Tynemouth and North Shields, North Tyneside Library, (T159/19).

(GRO – Glamorgan Record Office, Cardiff;

NLW – National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; PRO – The National Archives, Public Record Office, Kew; WGAS – West Glamorgan Archive Service, Swansea.)

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Index ( not updated, use ‘find’ function on the downloaded file to access subjects listed in the Index). Abergavenny, 6, 7 Allen, James H, 25, 26, 31 Anticline, Maesteg, 6, 17 Barbados, 50, 51 Barrow, James, 69 Barrow, William, 6,7 Bath, Somerset, 18, 20, 21 Bedford, John, 6, 96 Bicheno, James E, 8, 9 Blast engines, 15,18,21,26,32,46,91 Blast furnaces, 3,4 at Maesteg Wks. 9,12,14-16,18,20,82 at Llynfi Wks. 26,29,30,38,44,46,58, 67,68,77,78,86,88,89 at Garth Wks. 79 Board of Health, Cwmdu, 65, 66 Booth, Felix, 33 Borradaile, William, 25 Bowring, Charles, 92, 93 Bowring, John, 34-44,53,54,62,92, 94 Bowrington, 35-38,43,44,92 Brewery, Vale of Neath, 11,19,23,96 Brittan & Co, 64 Brogden, James, 23,71 Brogden, Alexander, 71,74,75 Brown Street, Nantyffyllon, 92 Brunton, William, 18 Buckland, William H, 8-11,18-20, 22,23 Buckland, James M, 10,12,26,27,29 Cambrian Iron & Spelter Co.,25,27,28 31-34,39,45,50,84,92 Cambrian Row, 92 Casting house, 26,30,32,82,85,86 Cast iron bridge, see Talbot Br., Cavan, Colonel Philip, 50,61,77 Cavan, James, 34,45,50-52,92 Cavan Row, 27,51,85,92 Charles Row, 27,44,92

Cholera, 1866, 66 Coke ovens, 21,27,79,81,95 Collieries Dyffryn Madoc, 48,77 Garth, 70,77 Gin Pit, 48 No. 9 Level,68 Tywith, 70,71 Colquhoun, James, 67-69,96 Company shops,41 Maesteg Works, 15,22 Llynfi Works, 26,27,38,42,43, 63-65,72,92 Courtenay, Philip, 26,34 Cwmdu Works, see ironworks, David, Llewellyn, 6,7 Debenture holders, Llynfi Works, 76 Demerara Railway, 50-52 Dowlais Ironworks, 18, 58,60 Engine house, 26,30, 46,85,90 Forge, Llynfi Works, 29,38,49,87 Fussell, Henry, 8-12 Garth Works, see ironworks, Glan Llynfi House, 20,93 Habakkuk, William, 58,68 Hampton, Charles, 16,17,47,49,58 Highway robbery, 39 Hubbuck, George P, 64,67 Hot blast, 21,67,68,77,89 Hyde, Henry, 65 Iron products Llynfi Works, 38,46,47,49,59,60, 69,75 Maesteg Works, 12,13,18,21

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Iron Ore, Black-band ore, 16,17,19,21,22,48, 55,67,68,69,79 Imports, 13,15,69 Ironworks Cambrian, 25,26,95 Cwmdu, 21,95 Garth, 79,95 Llynfi, 40,44-49,56-60,84-91,95 Maesteg, 6-25,80-83 Tondu, 49,70,72,74 John Street, Nantyffyllon. 92 Jones, Charles, 8,9,11 Jones, Thomas, Llynfi Works, 38,49 Jones, Thomas, Maesteg Works, 7,8 Jones, William, 9,11 Lemon, Richard Parker, 20 Llwyni Farm, 6-8,11 Llynfi Lodge, 36,93 Llynvi Coal & Iron Co, 61,63,65, 70,71,95 Llynvi Iron Company, 33,34,36-40, 45,52 Llynvi & Tondu Co, 77,78 Llynvi Ton. & Og. C. & I. Co, 70, 73-76,95 Llynvi Vale Iron Co, 23,45,49,52, 54,57,59,61,63 Macgregor, Alexander, 45,51,92 Macgregor Row, 27,92 Maesteg Works, see ironworks, Maesteg Uchaf Farm, 8 Maesteg Isaf Farm, 79 Margam Tinworks, 9,10,12,17 McChlery, Michael, 51,52 McGarel, Charles, 45,50,51 Metcalfe, Stephen Wright, 54,55 Metcalfe Street, Caerau, 55 Mitcalfe, William, 45,49,52-56,94 Moffatt, George, 60-63,68,71, 72,76,77,94 Motley & Fussell, 15,16

Motley, Thomas, 9-12 Mushet, David, 14,15,17 Nantycrynwydd Farm,85 Neath Abbey Iron Co, 18,46 New Works, see Llynfi Works, North’s Navigation Collieries, 78 Nynehead Estate, 13 Old Works, see Maesteg Works, Oliver, David S, 20 Palermo, Italy, 59 Patent Galvanised Iron Co, 79 Pillar, Thomas, 63-65 Plasnewydd House, 93 Porthcawl, 10,18,26,31,47,57,58,70 Rail mill, Llynfi Works, 38,46,69 Railway chairs, 18,20 Railways, Dyffryn Llyn. & P’Cawl, 9,18,26 Llynvi Valley, 41,47,51,54,55, 57,70, 78 Roe, John Phanuel, 58,59 Rusher, Joseph, 11,18 St Michael’s Church, 78,88 Saunders, George, 63 Sheppard, Charles, 21 Smith, Robert, 9-12,16 Smith, John Joseph, 77 Southampton, 19 Stormy Junction,21,22 Summers, Day and Baldock, 19 Talbot Bridge, 13,66,83 Truck System, (see company shops), Wootton Courtenay, 13,14 Workforce, size of Maesteg Works, 15 Llynfi Works, 39,69 Wordsworth, William, 33,34

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