Welsh Journals

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reminder of what was a flourishing, vibrant and prosperous South Wales industrial community. There are very few other examples of South Wales industrial townships which retain such a high proportion of their original structure. For the sake of simplicity I have referred to the company formed by Hill, Hopkins and Pratt as Blaenavon Company throughout even though the company went through several changes of ownership and several name changes. The land leased by the company from the Lord of Abergavenny remained essentially the same. I have referred to all parts of Blaenavon by their modern street or area names to ease identification. Many personal names referred to in the text are typed in full to avoid confusion. Many men were using, or reverting to, the Welsh form of patronymic surnames well into the Nineteenth Century. A general description of the area The township grew up after the founding of Blaenavon Ironworks in 1788. The population peaked in around 1910 when it reached just over 13,000. Most of the town lies between 310 m. and 370 m. above sea level. The main streets tend to run from the top of the town to the bottom. The main shopping area, Broad Street, which became the heart of the town from the 1850s onwards, runs vertically down the hillside. This is extremely unusual in Welsh Valley towns where main shopping streets almost always run parallel to the valley bottoms. The town is also unusual in that it still exists as a single easily definable entity and has not been subsumed into a conjoined urban valley sprawl. The main roads to Pontypool and to Brynmawr were built surprisingly late. Until the 1890s Blaenavon was the only major valley town without a main road running down the valley. Early patterns of ownership in the town The area out of which the Urban District of Blaenavon was formed in 1894 comprised parts of the old parishes of Llanover, Llanfoist, Trevethin, Aberystruth and Llanwenarth Ultra. These parishes lay mostly within the ancient manor of Ebbwth Vawr. Parts of the urban district also fell within parts of the bedellary of Abergavenny and the manor or forest' of the Blorys [Blorenge]. In all, the area of Blaenavon was contained within parts of the manor of Ebbwth Vawr, the manor of the Blorenge, the sub-manors of Park Lettice, Llanover, Llanwenarth, Llanfoist and wholly within the lordship of Abergavenny. It bordered on the manor of Pellenig, the manor of Crickhowell, and the sub-manors of Goetre and Varteg and on the parishes of Llanelly, Goetre, Llanelen, Llanhilleth and Aberystruth.2 Manors and parishes bearing the same name did not necessarily have the same boundaries. The area that now constitutes the town of Blaenavon lay in the manor of Park Lettice which, as a sub-manor of the Lordship of Abergavenny, had a chequered ownership. In 1586 it was owned firstly by Rhys Williams then by Mathew