Blaenllechau is a small village located in the Rhondda Fach valley,

Rhondda Cynon Taf Rhondda Cynon Taf (; RCT; also spelt as Rhondda Cynon Taff) is a Principal areas of Wales, county borough in the South East Wales, south-east of Wales. It consists of five valleys: the Rhondda Fawr, Rhondda Fach, Cynon, Taff () and Ely valleys, ...

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

. The neighbouring villages are Ferndale, Maerdy and Tylorstown. The population of Blaenllechau is less than 1,000. The village is defined by the river border, flowing between Blaenllechau and neighbouring Ferndale, of which the well-known Blaenllechau waterfall is a tributary.

History

Originally a single

farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...

in the

Rhondda Rhondda , or the Rhondda Valley ( ), is a former 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 Fawr valley (, 'large') and t ...

, in 1857 David Davis and his partners took a mineral rights lease in the area, and went exploring for high quality

steam coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is a type of f ...

. In 1862, after many difficulties, the 4 feet seam was struck below the farm. With little in the area, and the need to house workers and their families, the

colliery Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. 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 extra ...

village was developed alongside the workings of Ferndale No.1 pit. Eventually there were two shafts developed, Ferndale No. 1 and Ferndale No. 5, extracting steam coal from a depth of until 1959, when the entire complex was shut 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 ...

.Colliery Guardian ''Guide to the coalfields'', 1955, p 384 The pit-head workings were still extant in the early 1960s, but have since been demolished and the shafts filled. The village and its nearest town of Ferndale were served by passenger rail on the Maerdy Branch, which left the mainline 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 stage ...

at Porth. Even under the ownership of the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...

, the line always found it hard to compete against local bus operators, although passenger services ran regularly from

Pontypridd Pontypridd ( , ), Colloquialism, colloquially referred to as ''Ponty'', is a town and a Community (Wales), community in Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales, approximately 10 miles north west of Cardiff city centre. Geography Pontypridd comprises the ...

to Maerdy. Passenger services were ceased completely after the

Beeching Axe The Beeching cuts, also colloquially referred to as the Beeching Axe, were a major series of route closures and service changes made as part of the restructuring of the nationalised railway system in Great Britain in the 1960s. They are named ...

decreased the size of

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...

ways in the 1960s, and the line operated as a mineral railway until the closure of the last of valley's collieries, Maerdy, in 1990. The sites of both railway and colliery have been landscaped. A cricket and sports ground now stand on a slag and

spoil tip A spoil tip (also called a boney pile, culm bank, gob pile, waste tip or bing) is a pile built of accumulated ''spoil'' – waste material removed during mining. Spoil tips are not formed of slag, but in some areas, such as England and Wales, ...

called the 'Banana tip' because of its shape. Blaenllechau was famously mentioned by Stanley Baker in the movie Hell Drivers. Baker's Character Tom Yately is asked where he is from and he replies "Blaenllechau".

References

External links

Village history (Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust)www.geograph.co.uk : photos of Blaenllechau and surrounding areaWelsh Coal Mines - all the pits, all the histories
{{authority control Villages in Rhondda Cynon Taf