Hopkinstown ( cy, Trehopcyn) is a small village to the west of

Pontypridd () ( colloquially: Ponty) is a town and a community in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. Geography comprises the electoral wards of , Hawthorn, Pontypridd Town, 'Rhondda', Rhydyfelin Central/Ilan ( Rhydfelen), Trallwng ( Trallwn) and Treforest (). ...

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, alongside the

River Rhondda The River Rhondda ( cy, Afon Rhondda) is a river in South Wales with two major tributaries, Rhondda Fawr (meaning ''big Rhondda'') and Rhondda Fach (meaning ''little Rhondda''). Description The river has two major tributaries, the ''Rhondda F ...

. Hopkinstown is a former coalmining and industrial community, now a district in the town of

within the Rhondda electoral ward. Neighbouring settlements are

Pwllgwaun Pwllgwaun (or Pwll-Gwaun) is a village and small suburb of Pontypridd within the 'Rhondda' electoral ward, bordered by Hopkinstown and Graigwen hill to the north and east, the hillsides of Maesycoed above, and is located along the banks of the ...

Trehafod Trehafod is a village and community in the Rhondda Valley between Porth and Pontypridd in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales, with a population of 698 in the 2011 census.(The earlier name ''Hafod'' was altered in 1905 to avoid confu ...

and Pantygraigwen, and the sub-districts of Troed-Rhiw-Trwyn and Gyfeillion.

Early and industrial history

The area where Hopkinstown is located was, as late as 1842, an undeveloped woodland known as the Ty Mawr Estate. Owned by Evan Hopkin, the area developed quickly, until around 1850 it was beginning to urbanise after the sinking of two collieries: Ty Mawr and Gyfeillion. Along with buildings to house the miners, Hopkinstown quickly acquired a chemical works, an iron foundry and coke ovens. The original village was a single row of houses along the Rhondda Road that followed the river. Not until the 1871 census was the name Hopkin's Town used to describe it. By 1891 the village had a population of over 1,500 and several streets of terraced houses had been built. Hopkinstown saw eight shafts sunk in the industrial period. John Calvert, an engineer from Yorkshire, had already sunk the Newbridge Colliery (later part of the Maritime Collieries, near Graig, Pontypridd), and in 1848 he funded the construction of the Gyfeillon Colliery. It passed to the Great Western Railway company, then reverted to Calvert before he sold it to the Great Western Colliery Company, which sank a total of six shafts known collectively as the Great Western Collieries. Two other mines in the area, not owned by the Great Western, were the Typica Pit at Troed-rhiw-trwyn, which was only open for five years between 1875 and 1879, and the Lan Colliery, the only pit in Hopkinstown south of the River Rhondda. In 1889 it was owned by William Davies of Pontypridd, employing only seven miners, and was closed in September 1907. On Tuesday 11 April 1893, fire broke out in the

Great Western Mine Great Western Mine, also known as Hetty Pit, was a coal mine, at Hopkinstown, near Pontypridd, Glamorgan in South Wales. History The mine was opened, as "Gyfeillon Pit", in August 1851 by John Calvert, an engineer from Yorkshire, who had al ...

colliery, trapping some 200 miners underground. Although the majority were rescued, the death-toll was 63 men and boys. On 23 January 1911 eleven people died in the

Hopkinstown rail disaster On Monday 23 January 1911, a collision between a passenger train and a coal train on the Taff Vale Railway line at Hopkinstown, outside Pontypridd in Wales, resulted in the loss of eleven (twelve according to the official report) lives. The acci ...

,''The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales''. John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur Lynch (2008) pg730 when a carriage carrying passengers collided with a stationary coal train on 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 ...

line.

Notable residents

Elaine Morgan Elaine Morgan OBE, FRSL (7 November 1920 – 12 July 2013), was a Welsh writer for television and the author of several books on evolutionary anthropology. She advocated the aquatic ape hypothesis, which she advocated as a corrective to what ...

(1920–2013), script-writer, populariser of science and feminist writer, was born in the village.

External links

Rhondda Cynon Taff Library Service
Heritage Trail, Hopkinstown

References

{{authority control Villages in Rhondda Cynon Taf Pontypridd