The Rhondda our Valley

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Rhondda Places of Worship". LSJ Services [Wales] Ltd. TheRhondda.co.uk. Archived from the original on 30 September 2011 . Retrieved 19 October 2011.

So, it's a particular pleasure for me to be able to support this project. The others have all been successful and I very much hope this will be as well." 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. [31] Post-medieval and pre-industrial Rhondda: 1550–1850 [ edit ] Census, of those who answered: Welsh 90.28%, English 8.23%, Irish and Scottish 0.92%, rest of world 0.58%. 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. [83] The Rhondda mines were comparatively antiquated in their methods of ventilation, coal-preparation and power supply. [83] 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. [83] 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, [84] which was drastically reduced after an industrial recession in 1956 and with increased availability of oil. [80]Welcome to Rhondda Cynon Taf Libraries Digital Archive. Here you will find over 20,000 digital images taken from our local history collections. There are images of people at work and at play; of buildings; places and events helping to illustrate all aspects of life in the County Borough from around 1880 to the present day. Maerdy is ‘maer-dy’, the mayor’s house: in the Middle Ages, the ‘mayor’ or reeve, normally the richest farmer in the area, would oversee the landowner’s estate. Just a few miles up the road at Trehafod, the Lewis Merthyr Colliery has found new life as the Rhondda Heritage Park. Here among the rusting relics of busier days, the unique industrial heritage and way of life is kept alive. In multimedia and reconstructions of village life, the Heritage Park tells the history of the Rhondda. Former colliers, who worked these pits for years, lead visitors underground to experience working life in the mine during the 1950s.

We've been looking at the possibility of, instead of digging all that material out of the cutting and having to deposit it somewhere else, extending the tunnel with a short, sloping tunnel up to the surface. That would actually make it more than two miles long if that happened. Pontygwaith means ‘bridge of the work’, a small ironworks which predated the coal industry. Cwmparc is the valley of the park, a mediaeval hunting lodge. ‘Llwyn’ means ‘bush or grove’; so Llwyncelyn is ‘holly grove’. Proper linguists love to argue about this, but the best guess seems to be that the original name was something like ‘Glyn Rhoddne’. The Rhondda Valleys have produced two world-class darts players. In 1975 Alan Evans from Ferndale won the Winmau World Masters, a feat repeated in 1994 by Richie Burnett from Cwmparc. Burnett surpassed Evans when he also became BDO World Darts Champion, winning the tournament in 1995. Tom Jones, David Alexander and Paul Child have been among those who sang songs about the Rhondda as has Max Boyce who was born in Treorchy, Rhondda.The temperance movement, absorbed into the moralistic system of the Nonconformist chapels, caused a shift in social attitudes in the mid to late-19th and early 20th century Rhondda. Alcohol was looked down on and so were the increasingly violent sports such as rugby, [137] so that many young men sought more acceptable pastimes. Voice choirs were a natural progression from chapel society and brass bands eventually gained acceptance by the movement. Chapel life was central to valley life throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but as with many communities throughout Britain, the post-war periods saw a decline in regular membership. To an extent the number of places of worship declined with the population, but this was exacerbated in the Rhondda by a swift decline in the number of Welsh speakers. Welsh-language chapels in particular saw a sharp drop in membership from the 1950s, and many closed in the next half-century. By 1990 the Rhondda had less than 50 places of worship and many premises had been demolished. [121] Political activism [ edit ] Lodge banner depicting Unionist A.J. Cook Although association football was not so popular as rugby in the Rhondda in the early 20th century, after the 1920s several notable players emerged from the area. Two of the most important came from the village of Ton Pentre; Jimmy Murphy was capped 15 times for Wales, and in 1958 managed both the Welsh national team and Manchester United. Roy Paul, also from Ton Pentre, led Manchester City to two successive FA Cup finals in 1955 and 1956 and gained 33 Welsh caps. Alan Curtis, who was best known for representing Swansea City and Cardiff City, came from the neighbouring village of Pentre, and in an 11-year international career won 35 caps for Wales, scoring six goals.

Trehafod takes its name from a farm. The ‘hafod’ was the upland farm, where cattle and sheep were taken to graze in summer (‘haf’ in Welsh) – as opposed to the ‘hendre’, the old ancestral winter home down in the valley. Rhondda Cynon Taff library services – Maerdy History". Archived from the original on 4 October 2008.

Walk our Hillsides

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'. [3] [4] The suggestion is that the river is speaking aloud, a comparison to the English expression "a babbling brook". [3] If we can make that happen, we just feel the momentum that we create would just get it over the line." Glamorgan County History, Volume IV, Early Modern Glamorgan from the Act of Union to the Industrial Revolution, Glanmor Williams, p. 26. University of Wales Press (1974). The Rhondda Valleys were also home to a strong early nonconformist Christian movement. This manifested itself in the baptist chapels which had a marked cultural influence in Rhondda during the 19th and early 20th century. The Rhondda Valley is well known for its male voice choirs and plays a key role in Wales' celebrated musical tradition. Rugby is the favourite sport in the Rhondda. See also: Great Depression in the United Kingdom Commemorative statue to the "Mining Communities of Rhondda" Robert Thomas (1926–1999)

The mid-19th century brass bands had a poor relationship with the Nonconformist chapels, mainly due to the heavy social drinking that came hand in hand with being a member. [139] This changed towards the end of the 19th century, when on becoming more respectable, many bands had actually joined the temperance movement. Two Rhondda brass bands which both started as temperance bands are the Cory Band from Ton Pentre, who started life as Ton Temperance in 1884; [140] and the Parc and Dare Band, formerly the Cwmparc Drum and Fife Temperance Band. [141] The oldest in Rhondda is the Lewis-Merthyr Band, formerly Cymmer Colliery Band, founded as the Cymmer Military Band in or before 1855. [142]Wales in the Twentieth Century World: Family on the Dole 1919–1939; Mid Glamorgan County Council Education Department (1994) pp. 3–4. 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. [16] This dynasty was replaced by another founded by Meurig ap Tewdrig, whose descendant Morgan ap Owain would give Glamorgan its Welsh name Morgannwg. [17] 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. [18] Hendre’ crops up in local placenames like Hendrecafn, Hendreforgan and Hendregwilym. Hendregwilym was translated into English as Willamstown, which caused a bit of a stir at the time. I’m not sure if the same thing happened when Glyn Rhedynog became Ferndale, but another Welsh coalowner, David Davis of Blaengwawr, seems to have been behind that. Aileen Fox (1939). Early Welsh Homesteads on Gelligaer Common, Glamorgan. Excavations in 1938. Glamorganshire. Vol.94. Archaeologia Cambrensis. pp.163–199.