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HISTORY IN THE ROUGH How many people who
have played on Tredegar Park Golf Course know that they are on one of the
earliest industrial sites in South Wales, dating back to the seventeenth
century - part of the very cradle of the Industrial Revolution? Or that
horse-drawn trams of iron and coal once travelled along the embankment you
call the Causeway, whilst a beehive-shaped furnace stood near the point where
the dock-feeder goes underground (alongside the 9th green), and a waterwheel
provided power for a bellows to the blast for smelting iron?
Several clues put us on the trail of this
long-forgotten piece of local history. First, the name,
" Forge
Lane ", and the presence of loose clinker
and slag around the western end of the Causeway. Second, the Causeway
itself - who would have constructed a perfectly level embankment across the
park, with evenly-graded sides, too narrow for a carriage-road, heading
towards the line of the famous Park Mile Tramroad? A
small paradox was the bridge over the Ebbw. Its iron superstructure is dated
1870, cast by Jordan of Newport (the same founders who cast the famous
Tredegar Town Clock), but the stone piers do not match the ironwork, and are
much earlier. (The Tredegar coat of arms on the bridge has been vandalised
over the past two months). For those intrepid enough to risk their necks
looking at the other side of the two cast iron
plaques on the bridge. they bear the Royal Coat of
Arms.
At this point it is worth mentioning the great
importance of the Pye Corner area in the early 1800's. In 1805, the Sirhowy
Tramroad was built from Sirhowy and Tredegar to Nine Mile Point, where it
connected with the Monmouthshire Canal Company's Tramroad, which ran down the
Sirhowy and Ebbw Valleys to Newport Docks via Tredegar Park.
The Tredegar Park section, called the Park Mile,
was financed by Sir Charles Morgan. The horse-drawn trams ran on short
flat-bottomed cast iron rails, anchored with iron dogs onto stone sleepers -
and numerous sleepers with their securing-holes, some even with oak dowels
remaining in them - can be seen in the buttresses of the underpass running
beneath the existing railway line at the end of the Causeway. This tramroad
provided an outlet to the sea for all the coal tinplate and iron of the
Sirhowy and Ebbw Valleys, and in 1826, the Old Rumney Railway (which
eventually became the Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway) linked with
it at Pye Corner, providing an outlet from the Rhymney Iron Works and
intermediate coal tinplate and iron operations in the Rhymney Valley.
However, the story of our own forge begins in
1690, when it was leased to John Morgan of London. It was worked in conjunction with
the forges at Machen and Eglwysilian. In 1748 it was leased to Thomas Morgan,
Hugh Jones, and Samuel Pratt, and in 1764 a further lease was granted to John
Maybery.
In 1775, Maybery and his partner John Wilkins
got into financial difficulties, and finally in 1781 the works were taken
over by Messrs. Harford & Co. of Melingriffith (who later, in 1791,
established their great iron-works at Ebbw Vale). The Harfords ran the Tredegar Park works until its final closure in
1822.
So much for the forge itself, but what about
communications and water supp1y? Examination of
the 1844 Tithe Map shows the existing bridge, and also shows a leat following
the line of the dock
feeder, ending where the feeder goes underground. However, the l dock feeder
was not built until 1868, so the water-course on the .I 1844 map must have
been the supply to the forge, and this fixes the position of the water wheel.
It appears to have drained into a long ornamental pond running parallel with
the lower half of Forge lane, and then flowing back into the Ebbw.
Documentary proof of the tramroad's existence
was much harder to find and came from a rather unlikely source. In late 1972,
Newport Museum put on exhibition a hand-drawn
map used at the trial of the Monmouthshire Chartists in 1839. This is really
a road map of the Western
Valley showing all the
beer-houses, and showing Pye corner in some detail. A double dotted line
following our embankment, curving northward over the Ebbw to intersect with
the park Mile Tramroad (opposite the existing Clubhouse), is described as " Old Tramroad ". Proof positive - it was " old " in 1839 because the works closed in
1822. The existing embankment in fact disappears under the 17th green.
So there the story ends for the moment. There
are a lot of unanswered questions on which we are now working. In particular,
what exactly did the forge produce, and from where did it obtain its raw
materials, particularly prior to the opening of the Park Mile Tramroad in
1805? Are there any rails or stone sleepers buried in the embankment which
might tell us the tramroad's gauge?
Finally, the most interesting hypothesis.
Before the Park Mile was built, did the Forge Tram Road run up a modest incline
to the Monmouthshire
Canal at Alltyryn which
was opened in February 1796?
With luck we should have all the answers in
time for the Centenary Brochure.
C. R. Williams Oxford House (Risca) Industrial Archaeology
Society.
April 1973.
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