‘The ‘History of Tredegar’ by Evan Powell provides a comprehensive account of the development of the ironworks and coal mining in Tredegar from 1738 to 1900 and is a valuable source for anyone interested in finding out more about one of the important industrial towns that developed in the Industrial Revolution. There are plenty of interesting details to satisfy the general reader, too. The first published edition was based on Evan Powell’s prize-winning essay for the Tredegar ‘Chair Eisteddfod’ which was held in February 1884 and Blaenau Gwent Heritage Forum’s reprint was in 2008.
Especially commissioned by Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council from renowned expert, Dr. John van Laun, this book is the first authoritative publication on the industrial archaeology of Blaenau Gwent. It traces the important role the area played in the Industrial Revolution that shaped the modern world, and examines the impact of that process on local landscapes, communities and people. The book includes seven trails to lead visitors and local people alike around the industrial archaeology of this fascinating area.
Derek Southall was born in 1936 in the South Wales valley town of Tredegar. He spent the first twelve years of his life living with his close-knit family in Upper Mount Pleasant on the mountain above the Georgetown area of the town. Although life was hard there, it was a period that he cherished all the more as he grew older. This book takes us back to a time before most of our modern day conveniences, when life in the valleys was shaped, and tainted, by heavy industry. The houses in Mount Pleasant lacked running water and electricity, but the community was a strong one, held together by kinship, friendship and shared experience.
This booklet contains an interesting photographic record exploring the now, largely, forgotten world of the coal-mining industry in South Wales. Peter Morgan Jones details the comradeship of miners below ground and the strong community above it. He also shows the cost to lives spent working in filthy, blackness stalked by the ever-present fear of death or accident.
Henry Hughes’ autobiography, originally recorded in Welsh in a school notebook, is a fascinating record of his experiences in two very different countries during a period when both were radically evolving. It is an illuminating social history, containing eye witness accounts of an early 19th Century Welsh iron town, life as a collier both in Wales and USA, and then as a pioneer settler on the western frontier.
Never so Innocent Again, is a narrative written from the notes and diary of Corporal Richard Llewellyn Davies of the 3rd Battalion of the Monmouthshire Regiment and the 9th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Richard left his village of Hollybush in the Sirhowy Valley, Monmouthshire on the morning of 5th August 1914. Three times wounded and twice gassed, he survived all of the main battles of the Western Front and returned home in January 1919. Of the nine volunteers that left the village with him, he was the only one to return.
