Rhondda , or the Rhondda Valley (Welsh: Cwm Rhondda [kʊm ˈr̥ɔnða]), is a former coalmining area in South Wales, historically in the county of Glamorgan. It takes its name from the River Rhondda, and embraces two valleys – the larger Rhondda Fawr valley (mawr, 'large') and the smaller Rhondda Fach valley (bach, 'small') – so that the singular "Rhondda Valley" and the plural are both commonly used. The area forms part of the South Wales Valleys. From 1897 until 1996 there was a local government district of Rhondda. The former district at its abolition comprised 16 communities. Since 1996 these 16 communities of the Rhondda have been part of Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough. The area of the former district is still used as the Rhondda Senedd constituency and Westminster constituency, having an estimated population in 2020 of 69,506. It is most noted for its historical coalmining industry, which peaked between 1840 and 1925. The valleys produced a strong Nonconformist movement manifest in the Baptist chapels that moulded Rhondda values in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is also known for its male voice choirs and in sport and politics.
Etymology
In the early Middle Ages, Glynrhondda was a commote of the cantref of Penychen in the kingdom of Morgannwg, a sparsely populated agricultural area. The spelling of the commote varied widely, as the Cardiff Records show:
Many sources state the meaning of Rhondda as "noisy", though this is a simplified translation without research. Sir Ifor Williams, in his work Enwau Lleoedd, suggests that the first syllable rhawdd is a form of the Welsh adrawdd or adrodd, as in 'recite, relate, recount', similar to the Old Irish rád; 'speech'. The suggestion is that the river is speaking aloud, a comparison to the English expression "a babbling brook".
With the increase in population from the mid-19th century the area was officially recognised as the Ystradyfodwg Local Government District in 1877, but was renamed in 1897 as the Rhondda Urban District after the River Rhondda.
Early history
Prehistoric and Roman Rhondda: 8,000 BC – 410 AD
The Rhondda Valley is located in the upland, or Blaenau, area of Glamorgan. The landscape of the Rhondda was formed by glacial action during the last ice age, as slow-moving glaciers gouged out the deep valleys that exist today. With the retreat of the ice sheet, around 8000 BC, the valleys were further modified by stream and river action. This left the two river valleys of the Rhondda with narrow, steep-sided slopes which would dictate the layout of settlements from early to modern times.
Mesolithic period
The earliest evidence of man's presence in these upper areas of Glamorgan was found in 1963 at Craig y Llyn. A small chipped stone tool found at the site, recorded as possibly being of Creswellian type or at least from the early Mesolithic period, places human activity on the plateau above the valleys. Many other Mesolithic items have appeared in the Rhondda, mainly in the upper areas around Blaenrhondda, Blaencwm and Maerdy, and relating to hunting, fishing and foraging, which suggests seasonal nomadic activity. Though no definite Mesolithic settlements have been located, the concentration of finds at the Craig y Llyn escarpment suggests the presence of a temporary campsite in the vicinity.
Neolithic period
The first structural relic of prehistoric man was excavated in 1973 at Cefn Glas near the watershed of the Rhondda Fach river. The remains of a rectangular hut with traces of drystone wall foundations and postholes was discovered; while radiocarbon dating of charcoal found at the site dated the structure as late Neolithic.
Bronze Age
Although little evidence of settlement has been found in the Rhondda for the Neolithic to Bronze Age periods, several cairns and cists have appeared throughout the length of both valleys. The best example of a round-cairn was found at Crug yr Afan, near the summit of Graig Fawr, west of Cwmparc. It consisted of an earthen mound with a surrounding ditch 28 metres in circumference and over 2 metres tall (91.9 ft × 6.6 ft). Although most cairns discovered in the area are round, a ring cairn or cairn circle exists on Gelli Mountain. Known as the Rhondda Stonehenge, it consists of ten upright stones no more than 60 cm (24 in) in height, encircling a central cist. All the cairns found within the Rhondda are located on high ground, many on ridgeways, and may have been used as waypoints.
In 1912, a hoard of 24 late Bronze Age weapons and tools was discovered during construction work at the Llyn Fawr reservoir, at the source of the Rhondda Fawr. The items did not originate from the Rhondda and are thought to have been left at the site as a votive offering. Of particular interest are fragments of an iron sword, the earliest iron object to be found in Wales, and the only C-type Hallstatt sword recorded in Britain.
Iron Age
With the exception of the Neolithic settlement at Cefn Glas, there are three certain pre-medieval settlement sites in the valley – Maendy Camp, Hen Dre'r Gelli and Hen Dre'r Mynydd. The earliest of these is Maendy Camp, a hillfort whose remains lie between Ton Pentre and Cwmparc. Although its defences would have been slight, the camp made good use of the natural slopes and rock outcrops to its north-east face. It consisted of two earthworks: an inner and outer enclosure. When the site was excavated in 1901, several archaeological finds led to the camp being misidentified as Bronze Age. These finds, mainly pottery and flint knives, were excavated from a burial cairn discovered within the outer enclosure, but the site has since been classified as from the Iron Age.
The settlement at Hen Dre'r Mynydd in Blaenrhondda was dated around the Roman period, when fragments of wheel-made Romano-British pottery were discovered. The site consists of a group of ruinous drystone roundhouses and enclosures, thought to have been a sheep-farming community.
The most certain example of a Roman site in the area is found above Blaenllechau in Ferndale. The settlement is one of a group of earthworks and indicates the presence of the Roman army during the 1st century AD. It was thought to be a military site or marching camp.
Medieval Rhondda: AD 410–1550
The 5th century saw the withdrawal of Imperial Roman support from Britain, and succeeding centuries saw the emergence of national identity and of kingdoms. The area which would become the Rhondda lay within Glywysing, which incorporated the modern area of Glamorgan and was ruled by a dynasty founded by Glywys. This dynasty was replaced by another founded by Meurig ap Tewdrig, whose descendant Morgan ap Owain would give Glamorgan its Welsh name Morgannwg. With the coming of the Norman overlords after the 1066 Battle of Hastings, south-east Wales was divided into five cantrefi. The Rhondda lay within Penychen, a narrow strip running between modern-day Glyn Neath and the coast between Cardiff and Aberthaw. Each cantref was further divided into commotes, with Penychen made up of five such commotes, one being Glynrhondda.
Relics of the Dark Ages are rare in the Glamorgan area and secular monuments still rarer. The few sites found have been located in the Bro, or lowlands, leaving historians to believe the Blaenau were sparsely inhabited, maybe only visited seasonally by pastoralists. A few earthwork dykes are the only structural relics in the Rhondda area from this period. No carved stones or crosses exist to indicate the presence of a Christian shrine. In the Early Middle Ages, communities were split between bondmen, who lived in small villages centred on a court or llys of the local ruler to whom they paid dues, and freemen, with higher status, who lived in scattered homesteads. The most important village was the mayor's settlement or maerdref. Maerdy in the Rhondda Fach has been identified as such, mainly on the strength of the name, though the village did not survive past the Middle Ages. The largest concentration of dwellings from the period, mainly platform houses, have been found around Gelli and Ystrad in the Rhondda Fawr.
During the late 11th century, the Norman lord, Robert Fitzhamon entered Morgannwg in an attempt to gain control of the area, building many earth and timber castles in the lowlands. In the early 12th century Norman expansion continued, with castles being founded around Neath, Kenfig and Coity. In the same period Bishop Urban set up the Diocese of Llandaff under which Glynrhondda belonged to the large parish of Llantrisant.
After the death of William, Lord of Glamorgan, his extensive holdings were eventually granted to Gilbert de Clare in 1217. The subjugation of Glamorgan, begun by Fitzhamon, was completed by the powerful De Clare family. Although Gilbert de Clare had now become one of the great Marcher Lords, the territory was far from settled. Hywel ap Maredudd, lord of Meisgyn captured his cousin Morgan ap Cadwallon and annexed Glynrhondda in an attempt to reunify the commotes under a single native ruler. This conflict was unresolved by the time of De Clare's death and the area fell under royal control.
Settlements of medieval Rhondda
Little evidence exists of settlements within the Rhondda in the Norman period. Unlike the communal dwellings of the Iron Age, the remains of medieval buildings discovered in the area follow a pattern similar to modern farmsteads, with separate holdings spaced out around the hillsides. The evidence of medieval Welsh farmers comes from remains of their buildings, with the foundations of platform houses being discovered spaced out through both valleys. When the sites of several platform houses at Gelligaer Common were excavated in the 1930s, potsherds from the 13th to 14th centuries were discovered.
The Rhondda also has remains of two medieval castles. The older is Castell Nos, located at the head of the Rhondda Fach overlooking Maerdy. The only recorded evidence of Castell Nos is a mention by John Leland, who stated, "Castelle Nose is but a high stony creg in the top of an hille". The castle comprises a scarp and ditch forming a raised platform and on the north face is a ruined dry-stone building. Its location and form do not appear to be Norman and it is thought to have been built by the Welsh as a border defence, which would date it before 1247, when Richard de Clare seized Glynrhondda. The second castle is Ynysygrug, close to what is now Tonypandy town centre. Little remains of this motte-and-bailey earthwork defence, as much was destroyed when Tonypandy railway station was built in the 19th century. Ynysygrug is dated around the 12th or early 13th century and has been misidentified by several historians, notably Owen Morgan in his History of Pontypridd and Rhondda Valleys, who recorded it as a druidic sacred mound. Iolo Morganwg erroneously believed it to be the burial mound of king Rhys ap Tewdwr.
The earliest Christian monument in the Rhondda is the shrine of St Mary at Penrhys, whose holy well was mentioned by Rhisiart ap Rhys in the 15th century.
Post-medieval and pre-industrial Rhondda: 1550–1850
In the mid-16th century the Rhondda, then known as the Vale of Rotheney, belonged to the large but sparsely inhabited parish of Ystradyfodwg, St Tyfodwg's Vale. It was divided administratively into three hamlets: the upper or Rhigos hamlet to the north, the middle or Penrhys hamlet, and the lower or Clydach hamlet. Through the post-medieval period the Rhondda was heavily wooded and its main economic staple the rearing of sheep, horses and cattle. The historian Rice Merrick, in describing the upland area of the Vale of Glamorgan, noted there "was always great breeding of cattle, horses and sheep; but in elder time therein grew but small store of corn, for in most places there the ground was not thereunto apt". The English cartographer John Speed described cattle rearing as the "best means unto wealth that the Shire doth afford". As there was no fair held in the Rhondda, the beasts were taken to neighbouring markets at Neath, Merthyr, Llantrisant, Ynysybwl and Llandaff. However, to be self-supporting, farmers in the area grew crops such as oats, corn and barley in small quantities. Crops were grown in the lower part of the Rhondda on narrow meadows adjoining riversides, though during the Napoleonic Wars scarce supplies forced cultivation of upland areas such as Carn-y-wiwer and Penrhys. Merrick described the diet of the upland inhabitants as consisting of "bread made of wheat... and ale and bear" [sic] and over 200 years later Benjamin Malkin showed how little the diet had changed when he wrote that the people still ate "oatmeal bread, with a relish of miserable cheese; and the beer, where they have any, is worse than none".
In the first half of the 17th century, rising costs of consumable goods and successive bad harvests brought economic change in Glamorgan. Those wealthy enough could seize chances created by the unsettled conditions and set about enlarging and enclosing farmlands. The enclosure of freehold lands begun in the later Middle Ages now gained momentum and farms once owned by individual farmers passed to groups of wealthy landowners. By the 19th century, most Rhondda farms and estates were owned by absentee landlords such as the Marquis of Bute, Earl of Dunraven, Crawshay Bailey of Merthyr and the De Winton family of Brecon.
Settlements of post-medieval Rhondda
The Acts of Union in the mid-16th century and the English Civil War in the mid-17th century brought much rebuilding in the Kingdom of England, to which Wales was now annexed. This appears in the structures built in the Rhondda Valley. The fluctuating economy of the late Tudor period resulted in farmers taking in more land, creating higher levels of surplus goods and so producing higher profits. These were reflected in new farmhouses built in the Rhondda and for the first time an emphasis on domestic comfort apparent in the design of dwellings. Many new farm buildings were simple structures of two or three small rooms, but of a much sturdier, more permanent quality than the medieval platform houses. A popular style was the Dartmoor longhouse, which combined the house and cowshed into one building. By 1840, the Rhondda had at least 160 farms, but most were destroyed with the growth of the mining industry. Of the few survivors, those of note include Tynewydd ('New House') in Tynewydd, a 17th-century house thought to have given its name to the neighbouring village of Tynewydd and of Tyntyle in Ystrad dated around 1600.
There were few industrial buildings before 1850; those of note include a 17th-century blast furnace at Pontygwaith which gave the village its name. and a fulling mill established by Harri David in 1738, which in turn gave its name to Tonypandy. Corn mills existed sparsely throughout the valleys, as did early coal pits, two being recorded as opening in 1612 at Rhigos and Cwmparc, though they would have been open-cast, not deep mined.
Industrial Rhondda 1850–1945
Industrial growth (1850–1914)
The South Wales coalfield is the largest continuous coalfield in Britain, extending some 113 kilometres (70 mi) from Pontypool in the east to St Brides Bay in the West, covering almost 2,600 square kilometres (1,000 sq mi). This took in most of Glamorgan and the entirety of the Rhondda within it. Although neighbouring areas such as Merthyr and Aberdare had already sunk coal mines, it was not until Walter Coffin initiated the Dinas Lower Colliery in 1812 that coal was exported from the Rhondda Valleys on any commercial scale. This was originally taken by packhorse, before the extension of Dr. Griffiths' private tramline, to Pontypridd and then by the Glamorganshire Canal to the port at Cardiff. The lack of transportation links was one of the main problems that curtailed exploitation of the Rhondda Valley coalfields, along with the belief that they lay too deep for economic working. It was therefore seen as an expensive risk. Exploration of the Rhondda was undertaken by the Bute Trustees, agents of the third Marquess of Bute, who not only owned large tracts of valley farmland but also possessed a large financial interest in the Cardiff Docks which would export the coal. The trustees sank the Bute Merthyr Colliery in October 1851, at the top of the Rhondda Fawr in what would become Treherbert. The Bute Merthyr began producing coal in 1855, as the first working steam-coal colliery in the Rhondda.
Along with the sinking of the first colliery at the head of the Rhondda, a second issue, transportation, was tackled with the extension of the Taff Vale Railway (TVR); royal assent was given in 1836. The original line was laid from Cardiff to Abercynon, and by 1841 a branch was opened to link Cardiff with Dinas via Pontypridd. This allowed easier transportation for Walter Coffin's Dinas mine, an unsurprising addition, as Coffin was a director of the TVR. In 1849 the TVR extended into the Rhondda Fach and, by 1856, the railway had reached the furthest areas of the Fach and Fawr valleys at Maerdy and Treherbert. For the first time, the Rhondda Valley was linked by a major transportation route to the rest of Wales and exploitation of its coalfields could begin.
The TVR line dominated coal transportation through the Rhondda's industrial history. Its monopoly was a bone of contention: the absence of rivals precluded colliery owners from negotiating lower haulage rates. Attempts were made to break the monopoly included the opening of the Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway between 1885 and 1895, which linked Blaenrhondda at the head of the Rhondda Fawr to the Prince of Wales Dock. To achieve this the Rhondda Tunnel was dug through Mynydd Blaengwynfy to Blaengwynfi – at the time the longest railway tunnel in Wales.
Initially the shallower pits at Aberdare proved a bigger attraction to prospective mine owners, but once Aberdare became fully worked by the 1860s, the Rhondda saw rapid growth. During the 1860s and the 1870s, 20 Rhondda Valley collieries opened, with the leading owner in the Rhondda Fach being David Davis of Aberdare, and David Davies in the Rhondda Fawr. In 1865, the coal output from the Rhondda Valley was roughly one-quarter of that of Aberdare; ten years later the Rhondda was producing over two million tons more than the Aberdare valleys. These figures would later be dwarfed by massive excavation rates in the last quarter of the 19th century and up to the First World War. In 1913, Rhondda Valley output was 9.6 million tons.
By 1893, there were more than 75 collieries in the Rhondda Valleys. Initially most were owned by a small group of individuals, but the trend changed towards the start of the 20th century, as companies began buying up existing collieries. The widespread adoption of limited liability status began a trend towards concentration of ownership, reducing some of the economic risks involved in coal mining: unstable coal prices, inflated acquisitions, geological difficulties, and large-scale accidents. The emerging companies were formed by the individuals and families who sank the original collieries, but by the start of the 20th century they were no more than principal shareholders. The firms included the Davies's Ocean Coal Company, Archibald Hood's Glamorgan Coal Company and David Davis & Son.
Population growth in the industrial period
During the early to mid-19th century, the Rhondda valleys were inhabited by small farming settlements. In 1841 the parish of Ystradyfodwg, which would later constitute most of the Rhondda Borough, recorded a population of less than a thousand. With the discovery of massive deposits of high quality, accessible coal in the mid-19th century, the valleys experienced a large influx of financial immigrants. The first came to the lower Rhondda villages of Dinas, Eirw and Cymmer. Special sinkers came from Llansamlet, while the first miners were from Penderyn, Cwmgwrach and neighbouring areas of Llantrisant and Llanharan. The 1851 Census lists apprenticed paupers from Temple Cloud in Somerset, some of the earliest English immigrants. From a mere 951 in 1851, the population of Ystradyfodwg parish grew to 16,914 in 1871. By 1901 the Rhondda Urban District had a population of 113,735. As more and more coal mines were sunk the population grew to fill the jobs needed to extract the coal. In the 1860s and 1870s the majority came from neighbouring Welsh counties, but with the improving rail transportation and cheaper transport, immigrants came from further afield. The 1890s recorded workers from the South West, places such as Gloucester and Devon, and by the 1900s people came from North Wales, the lead-mining area of Anglesey and the depressed slate-quarrying villages of Bethesda, Ffestiniog and Dinorwig. Although there are records of Scottish workers, mainly centred on Archibald Hood's Llwynypia mines, there were only small numbers of Irish, less than 1,000 by 1911. This absence is often blamed on the forcible ejection of the Irish who lived in Treherbert during three days of rioting in 1857. The population of the valleys peaked in 1924 at over 167,900 inhabitants.
The mass immigration in the period was almost entirely from other parts of Wales and from England. A notable exception was a group of Italian immigrants, originally from northern Italy round the town of Bardi. In the late 19th century, they were forced out of London by over-saturation of the market, and instead set up a network of cafés, ice cream parlours and fish & chip shops throughout South Wales. These became iconic landmarks in the villages they served and they and subsequent generations became Welsh Italians. Peculiar to the Rhondda was that shops run by Italian immigrants were known as bracchis, believed to have been named after Angelo Bracchi, who opened the first café there in the early 1890s. In the early 21st century several of the Rhondda's original bracchis were still open for business.
Decline of coal and economic emigration (1914–1944)
At the start of the First World War, the economic prospects in South Wales were good. Although production fell after the 1913 high, demand was still strong enough to push the coalfields to their limit. In February 1917 coal mining came under government control and demand increased as the war intensified, ensuring a market for sufficient supplies. After the war the picture began to change. Initially the British coal industry was buoyed by a series of fortuitous economic events, such as the American coal miners' strike, and by 1924 unemployment for miners was below the national average. But the belief that the mining industry would experience a permanent demand for coal was shattered by the Depression, when the Rhondda experienced a massive increase in unemployment. The situation worsened in 1926, when in response to coalowners reducing pay and lengthening working hours of miners, the TUC called a general strike in defence of the miners locked out following A. J. Cook's call "not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day". The TUC called off the strike just nine days later, without resolving the miners' cut in wages. The miners disagreed and stayed on strike for a further seven months until they were starved into surrender. The Rhondda saw many schemes set up by miners to aid their plight, such as soup kitchens and fêtes and "joy" days to support them, while in Maerdy the local miners set up a rationing system. By the time the miners returned to work, there was little desire for further action, which saw a decline in the popularity of 'The Fed' and greater emphasis on solving problems by political and parliamentary means.
With the Great Depression, employment in the Rhondda Valleys continued to fall. This in turn led to a decline in public and social services, as people struggled to pay rates and rents. One outcome of the lack of funds was a fall in health provisions, which in Rhondda lead to a shortage of medical and nursing staff, a failure to provide adequate sewage works, and a rise in deaths from tuberculosis. By 1932 the long-term unemployment figure in the Rhondda was put at 63 per cent, and in Ferndale at almost 73 per cent.
With little other employment available in the Rhondda, the only solution appeared to be emigration. Between 1924 and 1939, 50,000 people left the Rhondda. During this time life was difficult for communities built solely around a singular industry, especially as most families were on a single wage.
The start of the Second World War saw a turnaround in the employment figures, and by 1944 unemployment figures in the Rhondda ranged from 1 per cent in Treorchy to 3.7 per cent at Tonypandy.
Mining disasters
The possibility of serious injury or death was an everyday risk for the mine workers of the Rhondda Valley. The most notorious form of colliery disaster was the gas explosion, caused by a buildup either of methane gas or coal dust. As mines became deeper and ventilation harder to control, the risk increased. The worst single incident in the Rhondda was the 1867 Ferndale disaster, when an explosion took 178 lives. However, the major disasters accounted for only about a fifth of the overall fatalities. The list below shows mining accidents involving the loss of five or more lives in a single incident.
Modern Rhondda 1945–present
The coalmining industry of the Rhondda was artificially buoyed in the war years and there were expectations of a return to the pre-1939 industrial collapse after the end of the Second World War. There was a sense of salvation when the government announced the nationalisation of the British coal mines in 1947, but subsequent decades saw continual output reductions. From 15,000 miners in 1947, Rhondda had just a single pit within the valleys producing coal in 1984, located at Maerdy.
The decline in coal mining after World War II was a countrywide issue, but South Wales and Rhondda were more gravely affected than other areas. Oil had superseded coal as the fuel of choice in many industries and there was political pressure behind the oil supply. From the few industries still reliant on coal, the demand was for high quality, especially coking coal for the steel industry. By then, 50 per cent of Glamorgan coal was supplied to steelworks, with the second biggest market being domestic heating: the "smokeless" fuel of the Rhondda became once again fashionable after publication of the Clean Air Act 1956. These two markets controlled the fate of the mines in the Rhondda, and as demand fell from both, the effect was further contraction. In addition, exports to other areas of Europe such as France, Italy and the Low Countries experienced sharp decline: from 33 per cent of output around the start of the 20th century to some 5 per cent by 1980.
Other major factors in the decline of coal related to massive under-investment in the Rhondda mines over the previous decades. Most mines in the valleys had been sunk between the 1850s and 1880s, so that they were far smaller than most modern mines. The Rhondda mines were comparatively antiquated in their methods of ventilation, coal-preparation and power supply. In 1945, the British coal industry was cutting 72 per cent of its output mechanically, whereas in South Wales the figure was just 22 per cent. The only way to ensure financial survival of the mines in the valleys was massive investment by the NCB, but its "Plan for Coal" paper drawn up in 1950 was overly optimistic about future demand, which was drastically reduced after an industrial recession in 1956 and with increased availability of oil.
British and Welsh employment bodies funded and subsidised external businesses to locate replacement ventures in the valleys. The first attempt to bring in business unconnected to coal began in the 1920s, when David Jones, Town Clerk of the Rhondda Urban Council, gained government support for so doing. Arrivals included Alfred Polikoff's clothing factory, Messrs Jacob Beatus manufacturing cardboard boxes, and Electrical and Musical Industries Ltd. After the Second World War, 23 firms were set up in the Rhondda Valleys, 18 of them sponsored by the Board of Trade. Most had periods of growth followed by collapse, notably Thorn EMI in the 1970s and Burberry in the 2000s.
The Rhondda Heritage Park, a museum marking Rhondda's industrial past, lies just south of Porth in the former Lewis Merthyr Colliery at Trehafod.
Governance
There is one tier of local government covering the Rhondda: Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council. Although the Rhondda is divided into 16 communities, none of them have community councils.
Administrative history
Historically, Rhondda was mostly covered by the parish of Ystradyfodwg. The small village of Ystradyfodwg was centred on its parish church of St John the Baptist, with the old village being absorbed into the urban area of Ton Pentre as it grew during the industrial revolution. In 1877 most of the parish of Ystradyfodwg was made a local government district, governed by a local board, excluding only the Rhigos area of the parish, which lay to the north of the hills at the top of the Rhondda Fawr valley. The local government district was enlarged in 1879 to also cover parts of Llanwonno and Llantrisant parishes, which had the effect of bringing the Porth area within the Ystradyfodwg Local Government District.