Welsh Journals

CEREDIGION CYLCHGRAWN CYMDEITHAS HYNAFIAETHWYR SIR ABERTEIFI JOURNAL OF THE CARDIGANSHIRE ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY CYFROL (VOLUME) V 1965 RHIFYN (NUMBER) 2 INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN CARDIGANSHIRE* SOUTH Wales, in common with parts of England, experienced a period of history which brought rapid industrial development, a period which began, perhaps, when Anthony Bacon started to make iron in Merthyr Tydfil in 1765 and which ended towards the end of the first half of the nineteenth century when ironworks were reaching their peak and the coal industry and railways were developing quickly. This development emerged from easily-worked iron ore and limestone, the abundance of the South Wales Coalfield, and the growing use of the steam engine, but, unfortunately, it has focussed attention on itself to the exclusion of other parts of Wales which were also experiencing industrial develop- ment. It becomes necessary, therefore, in order to see the complete picture, to study those counties which are no longer regarded as industrial, but which nevertheless shared in the wide diffusion of industrial enterprise, the general quickening of economic life In the ironmaking towns of South Wales the early high-pressure steam engines in use at the beginning of the nineteenth century provided the motive power for driving rolls and operating pumps. The fuel needed was cheap and close at hand. The copper, gold, and lead mining enterprises of the remoter counties did not have this advantage and were obliged to use water power to drive waterwheels and turbines which, in their turn, operated pumps for drainage and worked various machines to take the ore through the different processes towards the recovery of the metal content. A study of industrial remains in these *Based on an address delivered to the Society at Aberystwyth, 24 April 1965.