Walking Cyfarthfa 1: The landscape of the Cyfarthfa iron works

[Chartist Merthyr]

THE LANDSCAPE OF THE CYFARTHFA IRON WORKS


"Cyfartha Iron Works were founded in 1765, and by 1806 had become the largest in the world, thanks to its having been the first in the area to change to the production of bar iron and adoption of other technologically advanced processes in the late 18th century. The fortunes of the works were more mixed in the latter half of the 19th century, in spite of a change to steel production". | Source: ggat.org.uk

"Pont Y Cafnau ... the world's oldest surviving iron railway bridge

"Cyvarthva Castle and Park form a fine object above the town; and Pen-y-Darren House, with its gardens, is equally interesting at the other extremity. But the general aspect of the vicinity is unprepossessing, the face of nature being disfigured by towering heaps of scoria from the furnaces, which are undergoing continued increase, thus precluding the growth of vegetation upon them, and exhibiting from their nakedness, in combination with the columns of smoke emitted from the works, a repulsive appearance of rudeness and gloomy sterility". ( A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, 1849).


The landscape of the Cyfarthfa iron works: Three waymark points

Whilst Cyfarthfa Castle is a well known visitor attraction that's on the tourist map, the following walk uses three waymark points to explore some less well known features of the landscape of the Cyfarthfa Iron Works:

Walk



Starting from the Cyfarthfa Retail Park, we walk the three waymark points:
[1] The Cyfarthfa iron works furnace bank
[2] The Pont y Cafnau iron bridge
[3] The iron master's residence Cyfarthfa Castle

Walk extension



We may round this off into a circular walk by continuing north to:
[4] the Cefn Coed viaduct;
and then returning south via Cyfarthfa Castle to:
[5] the Ynysfach Engine House;
taking us back to near the Cyfarthfa Retail Park.

Map

Google Maps | Google Earth (KML) | Flickr
Geograph British Isles | SO0306 | SO0307 | SO0407 | SO0406



WALK


The Cyfarthfa Retail Park



Today's visitor to the Cyfarthfa Retail Park - opened in May 2005 - is probably blissfully unaware of the historic industrial landscape lying within its shadow in the valley below. Leaving this spectacle of consumption, let us explore three waymark points - the Cyfarthfa iron works furnace bank, the Pont y Cafnau iron bridge, and Cyfarthfa Castle - that link us to Cyfarthfa's heyday as a centre of technological innovation, capitalist exploitation, and democratic aspiration.


[1] The Cyfarthfa iron works furnace bank



Nestled immediately below the Cyfarthfa Retail Park, although out of sight from the main road and lacking any tourist signage, is the truly monumental Cyfarthfa iron works furnace bank. Walking right up to the bank, we find a few battered and rusted tourist interpretation panels which provide some historical background plus images that highlight the sheer scale of the Cyfarthfa Iron Works site in its heyday.

The massive furnace bank constructed against the hillside contains six of the seven original late 18th and early 19th century blast-furnaces, surviving intact; "some of the best surviving nineteenth-century furnace structures in the world". "Ironmaster Richard Crawshay built seven furnaces at Cyfarthfa between 1786 and 1814, creating a fully integrated ironworks, which quickly became the largest in the world. Crucially, Crawshay adopted Henry Cort’s pioneering puddling process, a method of refining crude ‘pig’ iron into usable wrought iron". ( see here and here).

Walking north along the waymarked Taff Trail path beside the river, we pass alongside the monumental ruins of the furnace bank and can appreciate its sheer scale amidst the landscape. The abandoned iron works melts back into the landscape, recalling Roman ruins or a medieval castle as it's overgrown masonry blends back into into nature; a picturesque scene thats reminiscent of a Poussin or a Claude landscape painting when viewed from a distance.


[2] The Pont y Cafnau iron bridge



Continuing north along the Taff Trail for a half a mile or so to just below the confluence of the Afon Taf Fawr and the Afon Taf Fechan rivers, and pretty well hidden amidst the folds of the river bank and vegetation, is the Pont Y Cafnau iron bridge of 1793.

The Pont Y Cafnau bridge has been identified by experts as "the world's oldest surviving iron railway bridge" ( see notes here).

This is a unique cast-iron bridge, a combined aqueduct and tramroad bridge built by the chief engineer of the Cyfarthfa ironworks, to carry both the works' tram line from the nearby limestone quarries at Gurnos and its water supply over the river. It's diminutive scale notwithstanding, this was was an important early prototype for iron bridge construction that influenced Telford's monumental feats of engineering such as the celebrated Pontcysyllte and Chirk aqueducts.


[3] The iron master's residence Cyfarthfa Castle



Surveying the scene from the east side of the valley is the iron master's residence Cyfarthfa Castle, likewise blended into the Autumn landscape.

This no less monumental Gothic indulgence of iron master William Crawshay II, was built as a residence overlooking the massive iron works complex below in 1824.

Dominating the scene in medieval fashion with its castellated towers, it's no wonder that during the 1831 Merthyr Rising the protestors came to Cyfarthfa Castle to protest their grievances against their main protagonist William Crawshay.


[4] The Cefn Coed Viaduct



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[5] The Ynysfach Engine House



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LANDSCAPE: EXPLORATION AND INTERPRETATION




"Merthyr Tydvil, a place never to be forgotten when once seen. The blackest place above ground; I suppose, the Non-plus-ultra of Industrialism wholly mammonish, given up to shopkeeper supply-and-demand;—presided over by sooty Darkness physical and spiritual, by Beer, Methodism and the Devil, to a lamentable and supreme extent!" (Thomas Carlyle, 1854. My emphasis).


Towards "The Cyfarthfa Heritage Landscape"

Taken together we may relate the waymark points and sites explored here to the landscape network of the Cyfarthfa Iron Works, which was no less than the largest iron works and manufacturing concern in the world at the start of the nineteenth century. Thomas Carlyle - who coined the term "industrialism" - declared the new industrial landscape of Merthyr to be "a place never to be forgotten when once seen ... the Non-plus-ultra of Industrialism."

Today this is an abandoned landscape. These sites and signs of the industrial landscape are both disconnected and neglected; off the official tourist trail, theirs is more the domain of the urbex explorer (: the tunnel system of the Cyfarthfa furnaces).

This is a unique landscape of the industrial revolution, the Age of Iron and the Railways, deserving the full visibility of a shared public culture. "The Cyfarthfa Heritage Landscape," arguably, deserves designation as a World Heritage Landscape.


Cyfarthfa landscape
+ Walking Cyfarthfa 1: The landscape of the Cyfarthfa iron works
+ Walking Cyfarthfa 2: Towards the "Cyfarthfa Heritage Landscape"
+ Walking Cyfarthfa 3: The signs in the new digital landscape


Copyright | Text and photos copyright John Wilson and licensed for re-use under this Creative Commons licence.


(Posted by - John Wilson)