Blaencwm ( cy, Blaen-y-Cwm) is a village in the

county borough County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control, similar to the unitary authorities created since the 1990s. An equivalent te ...

Rhondda Cynon Taf Rhondda Cynon Taf (; RCT; also spelt as Rhondda Cynon Taff) is a county borough in the south-east of Wales. It consists of five valleys: the Rhondda Fawr, Rhondda Fach, Cynon, Taff (Welsh: ''Taf'') and Ely valleys, plus a number of towns and vill ...

, Wales, lying at the head the

Rhondda Rhondda , or the Rhondda Valley ( cy, Cwm Rhondda ), is a former coal mining, 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 Fa ...

Fawr valley. Two collieries were opened here during the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

, the Dunraven Colliery in 1865 and the Glenrhondda Colliery in 1911. Both had closed by 1966 and the sites have since been landscaped, leaving little trace of their industrial past. It is in the historic county of

Glamorgan , HQ = Cardiff , Government = Glamorgan County Council (1889–1974) , Origin= , Code = GLA , CodeName = Chapman code , Replace = * West Glamorgan * Mid Glamorgan * South Glamorgan , Mot ...

Location

Blaencwm is located in the upper Rhondda Valley about halfway between

Treorchy Treorchy ( cy, Treorci; ) is a town and community (and electoral ward) in Wales. Once a mining town, it retains such characteristics. Situated in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf in the Rhondda Fawr valley. Treorchy is also one of the 16 ...

and

Hirwaun Hirwaun is a village and community at the north end of the Cynon Valley in the County Borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales. It is NW of the town of Aberdare, and comes under the Aberdare post town. At the 2001 census, Hirwaun had a popul ...

, and about one mile north of

Treherbert Treherbert () is a village and community situated at the head of the Rhondda Fawr valley in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. Historically part of Glamorgan, Treherbert is a former industrial coal mining village which was at its ec ...

. It is served by the A4061 road over Mynydd Ystradffernol.

History

Before the industrialisation of the Rhondda, Blaencwm was a

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled peopl ...

and

rural In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are de ...

area. There is evidence in the area of

Mesolithic The Mesolithic ( Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymo ...

and

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

human activity, mainly through the discovery of basic hunting, foraging and tool making items. Blaencwm is also the site of three ruinous 16th century hafotai (summer houses ;

Welsh language Welsh ( or ) is a Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, and in Y Wladfa (the Welsh colony in Chubut Province, Argentina). Historically, it h ...

), small agricultural dwellings discovered on the north-east slope of the village. Of all the hafotai discovered in the Rhondda the most important is ''Lluest'' discovered in Blaencwm and proof of the agricultural history of the area. In the 19th century with the coming of the

Taff Vale Railway The Taff Vale Railway (TVR) was a standard gauge railway in South Wales, built by the Taff Vale Railway Company to serve the iron and coal industries around Merthyr Tydfil and to connect them with docks in Cardiff. It was opened in stag ...

coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

s began opening in the upper Rhondda Fawr. Two mines were sunk in Blaencwm, the first was the Dunraven Colliery opened by Thomas Joseph's Dunraven United Collieries in 1865. The business went in liquidation in 1866 and was taken over by Watts and Company in 1872. Between then and 1913 when it was purchased again, this time by the Cory Brothers, it changed its name to Tydraw Colliery. It closed in 1956. The second colliery, Glenrhondda (known locally as the Hook and Eye due to its reputation for improvisation), was opened in 1911 by Glenavon Garw Collieries. The mine was served by the

Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway The Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway was a Welsh railway company formed to connect the upper end of the Rhondda Fawr with Swansea, with the chief objective of transporting coal and other minerals to Swansea docks. It was incorporated in 1882, but ...

using the

Rhondda Tunnel The Rhondda Tunnel is an abandoned railway tunnel that runs between the Rhondda and the Afan Valleys in South Wales. It is long, making it the third longest railway tunnel in Wales, and the seventeenth longest in the United Kingdom. The tunn ...

, which linked Blaencwm to

Blaengwynfi Blaengwynfi is a village in the Afan Valley, in the Neath Port Talbot area of South Wales. It is in the community of Gwynfi and Croeserw, Location It is a part of the Upper Afan Valley. It used to be a coal mining village, and is directly below A ...

in the

Afan Valley {{Commons category, Valleys of Neath Port Talbot Landforms of Neath Port Talbot Neath Neath (; cy, Castell-nedd) is a market town and community situated in the Neath Port Talbot County Borough, Wales. The town had a population of 50,658 in ...

. This pit was closed by the

National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "ve ...

in 1966. The sites of both mines have since been cleared and landscaped to resemble the surrounding area.

References

External links

Rhondda Cynon Taf Library Services

www.geograph.co.uk : photos of Blaencwm and surrounding area
{{authority control Villages in Rhondda Cynon Taf Rhondda Valley