Welsh Journals

in Britain and in the United States, and this is reflected in the increasing interest which is being displayed in Welsh urban development. But these new studies suffer from a further problem in the Welsh context in that the cultural tradition is seen to be so predominantly rural that urbanism has been neglected as something which is alien to the Welsh way of life. It is all the more important, therefore, that the balance should be restored and that serious research into the characteristics and growth patterns of Welsh towns after the medieval period be seriously undertaken. This volume can hardly claim to be in the main stream of the new urban history, but it is essentially a contribution to the greater understanding of the detailed patterns of colliery settlements in south Wales after 1850. The author begins from the premise that we are all too willing to regard such settlements as part of a stereotype which is epitomized by the long rows of houses which follow the contours of the valley sides in so many parts of south Wales. Enquiry which has gone further than the depicting of these stereotypes is very limited and it is to this problem that the author addresses himself. There are three phases of colliery settlement growth recognized: an initial pioneering phase from 1850 to 1878, an intermediate period from 1878 to 1898 which corresponds roughly with the Public Health Act of 1875 and the housing by-laws which followed, and finally a third phase from 1898 forward, when a peak development of the coal industry was associated with higher wages and higher living standards and high activity in house construction. In the context of each of these phases the major agencies of house provision are considered, based mainly on the registers of deposited plans kept by the sanitary districts and later by the urban and rural districts. The contributions from individual owner/occupiers, private property investors and speculative builders, building clubs and colliery companies and coal owners are considered in turn, together with the input of other agencies, including local authorities which entered the housing field mainly after 1919. In relation to these phases and the particular form of building, a model is derived of development in the south Wales coalfield and this model is illustrated mainly from the Afan, Garw and Llynfi valleys. The Rhondda and the eastern valleys of the coalfield are used to illustrate departures from the proposed model. In the final section, an attempt is made to present an outline classification of colliery settlement and also to show the relationship of this classification to previous studies which rank settlements by their retail facilities. The model which is proposed has no quantitative basis and is essentially a personal and subjective interpretation of the various morphological elements which, during the process of growth of the settlement, have been pieced together to make up the total settle- ment pattern. As in all cases of generalization, there is some violence done to the variety of situations found in south Wales, but the model is itself convincing and gives insight into the characteristic ground patterns of these settlements. It is very difficult to divorce the type of plan from the