The two worlds of Wales
By Robert N. Jenkins
In 1833, A Topographical Dictionary of the Province of Wales stated that the tall hills defining the handsome landscape of southern Wales’ Rhondda Valleys had earned the “description of the Alps of Glamorgan. This neighborhood is singularly wild and romantic. The tourist, as he ascends, is gradually more and more delighted.’’
But the next sentence foreshadowed an immense change: “The Dinas colliers (coal mines) are in the vicinity …’’
Discovery of a high-grade coal soon would eradicate the place where tourists once had come to admire the bucolic life.
Ironically, a series of museums on the actual industrial sites now boosts Wales’ tourism into a significant economic factor, helping to offset the revenue lost when
mining ended in the late 20th century.
At the height of the period roughly between 1780 and 1980, about one in four Welsh were miners. For more than half of that time, that meant all Welsh people, not just men: Children as young as 5, and women, also went below ground. They worked 12-hour shifts, six days a week.
As still-remaining cottages show, miners and their families usually lived in company-owned housing – six to 10 people somehow crammed into four small
rooms. Well into the 19th century, these hovels had no running water.
Life above and below the ground is demonstrated in several well-done presentations in South Wales, including those noted here:
The basic ingredients of iron are iron ore, coal, limestone. All of these were in abundance beneath the Valleys. And deposits of all three were discovered fairly close together near the village of Blaenavon (bly NAH vin).
Industrialists set up mining operations and also constructed blast furnaces – in which the three minerals were heated together at about 2,700 degrees.
Now a fascinating UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Blaenavon Ironworks opened in 1789 with three blast furnaces, but within years it was among the largest iron manufacturing facilities in the world.
What had been an isolated village of perhaps 100, before the ironworks opened, by 1871 had soared to 9,736.
Now, grasses grow atop the chimneys of the four remaining furnaces. Visitors can walk up to the mouths of the furnaces and a couple of subsidiary buildings, listening to explanations of the process at five audio stations.
Just a few yards from the furnaces and outbuildings are a row of stone cottages
built at the end of the 18th century to house the most-skilled of the workers. Two of the cottages have been furnished to show life here in 1791 and 1841.
About 700 yards down a steep hill is the contemporary village of Blaenavon, home to about 5,800 people living in modernized row houses built for ironworkers. The excellent Heritage Center has interactive displays, black-and-white illustrations and photos, and an excellent timeline, bringing the hard era to life.
The Big Pit National Coal Museum eliminates a lot of the guesswork about life in the mines. Outfitted with a helmet -- you’ll need it, unless you’re shorter than 5 feet – a helmet light, and a leather belt holding the light’s battery pack and an emergency breathing device, you’ll be led for about an hour through shafts as much as 300 feet underground.
When the guide – all are former coal miners – instructs his visitors to turn off their lamps, you will experience a darkness like no other.
It is a chilling few seconds, and a hint of what life must have been like for the young children taken into the mines, given a candle and told to wait in the darkness until they heard the sound of the small horses pulling the coal carts on tracks coming toward them. Then, the child would hurry over to open and hold a door to let horse, cart and its handler pass through one of the connecting ventilation shafts.
But the children had to buy the candles and often wanted to save them, so they would douse the flame, sitting in the pitch black, listening for the horses – but hearing the rats they shared the space with.
Big Pit operated for a century, closing in 1980. It later opened as a museum, was refurbished, and in 2004, it won the prestigious international Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year.
The Rhondda Heritage Park offers a different sample of the miners’ life, taking visitors through buildings that once supported below-ground operations and now uses recordings and mannequins placed in period clothes to discuss another era.
The tour here, also led by a former miner, is briefer and less physically challenging than that at the Big Pit. It includes discussion of deadly accidents and how miners used specialized lamps to detect deadly gases.
Getting there, staying there: British Airways and several other airlines fly between North America and London, which is about 2 hours’ drive or train trip from Cardiff, Wales’ capital and formerly the No. 1 coal-shipping port in the world. Cardiff’s cutting edge hotel, in the recently rejuvenated Cardiff Bay area, is the handsome St. David’s Hotel and Spa.
More info: Visit www.world-heritage-blaenavon.org.uk,
www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/bigpit, www.rhonddaheritagepark.com. Note:
Only Rhondda Valley has an admission charge, because it is operated by the county, not Wales’ national historic-sites agency.
About the writer: Robert N. Jenkins, a member of the Society of American Travel Writers, was travel editor of the St. Petersburg, Fl., Times for 19 years. His web site is bobjenkinswrites.com.
