Dowlais

 

1759 Dowlais

John Guest came in I759 from Broseley opposite Coalbrookdale on the Severn to manage a furnace at Dowlais established in 1758.


 

 

Cyfartha

 

1765 Cyfartha

In 1765 Anthony Bacon, who came from Whitehaven, leased lands at Merthyr Tydfil and built furnaces at Cyfarthfa.


 

 

Plymouth and Hirwaun

 

1777 Plymouth and Hirwaun

About I777-80 Richard Crawshay, then of London, became his partner, and in the same year Bacon acquired mineral rights at Plymouth, farther down the valley, and in 1780 at Hirwaun, at both of which places furnaces were leased. In I783 he leased some of the Cyfarthfa properties to Francis Homfray and his three sons, Thomas Jeremiah and Samuel, who soon disposed of the lease, which later came into Crawshay's hands. Bacon died in I786, and the Court of Chancery afterwards ruled that his Cyfarthfa property should be leased to Crawshay, who already had a lease on the remainder, his Plymouth property to Richard Hill, formerly Bacon's agent, and Hirwaun to Glover of Abercarn.


 

 

Penydarren

 

1785 Penydarren

When John Guest died in 1785, his son Thomas succeeded him, and became associated there with William Taitt. Meanwhile, when the Homfrays had given up their Cyfarthfa lease in 1784, they had taken over ground at Penydarren and built ironworks there, of which Samuel Homfray became sole manager in 1789.

 

These four works of Cyfarthfa, Dowlais, Penydarren and Plymouth provided the reason for canal-building in the valley, the immediate impetus being the substitution of coal for charcoal in smelting, said to have been introduced at Cyfarthfa and Penydarren about 1787 and the consequent quick increase in output.


 

 

Cyfarthfa Canal

 

1770 Cyfartha Canal

The first was a little tub-boat canal 'a few feet in width', which was probably cut in the late I770's by Anthony Bacon. It ran from a junction with the Canaid brook near the later Cwm pit to Cyfarthfa Yard.

 

Charles Wilkins tells us that:

 

'It was so arranged as to pass by several of these "coal holes" or "levels", and by a little skill to flow into but not overflow, the primitive "workings". In each level a small bay was constructed for the convenience of loading the coal. On this canal long strings of iron barges were kept, of a Lilliputian size, six fastened together, and this convoy of six was entrusted to a couple of men, sometimes a man and a girl, one being on the bank with a shoulder strap, and the other in the first barge furnished with a long boat-hook, which was used in pulling the barge to shore or keeping it away from the banks.'

 

It was in use up to about 1835-40. The size of the boats is given as 4.5 metres by 2.5 metres (14 ft. 8 in. by 8 ft. 2 in. approx.).


 

 

 

 

The Valley Turnpike

 

1871 Valley Turnpike

Iron ore, coal and limestone were all found near the four ironworks at the head of the Taff valley in their early days. The pressing need was for better transport for the iron they made. Anthony Bacon, using mule-trains to Cardiff and Swansea, was the leader in getting the poor road from Merthyr Tydfil over the hills through Gelli-gaer and Caerphilly to Cardiff improved about 1767, and soon afterwards he with John Guest and William Lewis were the main industrialists authorised as trustees under the Glamorganshire Turnpike Act of 1771 to turnpike a road down the valley from Merthyr to Tongwynlais below Nantgarw, where it joined the Cardiff District Turnpike. This road was in I779 separated from others round Llantrisant and made a separate turnpike district, clearly because in the ironmasters' opinion it had not till then had enough attention. The General Turnpike Act of I785 brought it as trustees Jeremiah and Samuel Homfray and also James Harford of Melingriffith.


 

 

Glamorganshire Canal

 

1790 Glamorganshire Canal

Even on improved roads, a road wagon could only carry two tons of iron to the Old Quay on the river at Cardiff for shipment, and it was said that land carriage was costing the ironmasters £14,000 a year. So, led by Richard Crawshay, the men connected with the four ironworks at Merthyr, together with some prominent Brecon people including the proprietors of Wilkins's Old Bank, the owners of the Melingriffith works near Llandaff, and some from the little port of Cardiff, joined together to obtain the Act of I790 for the Glamorganshire Canal from Merthyr Tydfil by Pontypridd and Melingriffith to the Bank, a shipping place on the Taff below the Old Quay. It was to be the first major canal in Wales. The authorised capital was £60,000, with power to raise £30,000 more and, alone among Welsh canals, a limitation of dividend to 8 per cent on the capital expended was included, presumably at the instance of some who were going to use it. The original survey of March I790 had included a branch canal from near Merthyr to Dowlais, with 411 feet of lockage in I4 miles, to cost £16,282 in addition to the estimate of £53,465 for the main canal, but this was dropped.

 

The big shareholders were Richard Crawshay of Cyfarthfa, who subscribed £9,600 and his family another £3,500; William Stevens (£5,000), who was associated with Crawshay; the Harfords of Melingriffith with £6,000 and a local landowner, John Kemeys Tynte of Cefn Mably, with £5,000.  There was already a barge or two working on a short navigable length of the Taff and a works canal feeder at Melingriffith. This is not included in the Appendices. The Homfrays (£1,500) and Richard Forman (£1,000) of Penydarren, the Hills of Plymouth (£1,500), and William Taitt (£1,000) and Thomas Guest (£500) of Dowlais were smaller shareholders, while others were connected with one or other of the ironmasters. 

 

The first committee to be elected was representative mainly of the three ironworks at Merthyr other than Dowlais together with Melingriffith. It met at the Cardiff Arms Inn at Cardiff on 30 June I790, and engaged Thomas Dadford senior, Thomas Dadford junior, and Thomas Sheasby as joint contractors to make the canal for £48,288 exclusive of land, and a bond of £10,000 was taken from them for the performance of their contract. The company did not have an engineer of its own; instead, a group of leading proprietors was asked from time to time to check the work. Construction began in August from the Merthyr end.

 

Right from the start a quarrel had developed between Crawshay, who had virtually a controlling interest, and Taitt of Dowlais. When the Dowlais branch was dropped, Crawshay told Taitt (according to Taitt) that the Dowlais company must find their own way to the canal. At the same time (according to Taitt), the maximum proposed toll of 3d per ton per mile on which the capital had been subscribed was raised in the Act to 5d. Taking these two considerations together, Taitt protested that the Dowlais company could send, as they were then sending, their iron over the hills on horses' backs as cheaply as they could on the canal. Taitt therefore declared that he would have nothing more to do with the canal, and neither he nor Guest was on the first committee. However, Crawshay returned a soft answer; and the Dowlais company built a tramroad from Dowlais past Penydarren to the canal at Merthyr costing about £3,000,'

 

Almost immediately, Homfray and Crawshay also quarrelled 'owing to some difference respecting the making and management of the canal', ns Homfray also received a fearful snub from Taitt when he objected to the proposed tramroad, presumably in order to have it nearer Penydarren:

 

'Your several letters to Mr. Guest about the direction of our Rail Road from Dowlais to the canal surprises me exceedingly, as I know not what pretence you can possibly have to interfere in that.... If you want an accommodation from us, ask it as a favour, but do not think of demanding it as a right....'

 

This quarrel resulted in Forman of Penydarren leaving the canal committee, so that only two Merthyr works were represented till Taitt rejoined in I795 for three years.


 

 

The Cardiff Basin

 

1791

By June 1791 the dimensions of the first basin at Cardiff had been agreed.   The basin of the canal to contain 16 ft. depth of water, and to be not less than 40 yards wide, the sea-lock to be not less than 30 ft. wide and go ft. long; the entrance to the lock to be not less than 36 ft. wide.' An extension of the canal at Merthyr for half a mile to Cyfarthfa was also operational.


 

 

1792

In April 1792 a tramroad from limestone quarries at Gurnos to the canal at Cyfarthfa was authorised by the shareholders, and Crawshay was asked to build in. Another line from the Dowlais tramroad east of Gurnos to Castle Morlais quarries was built by Hill in 1799. The attribution of a date earlier than 1792 for the Gurnos line appears to conflict with the evidence of the canal minute books.  About this time the canal was navigable from Merthyr to Pontypridd, and by July seems to have been more or less navigable throughout, but 'not in a state to be taken off Mr. Dadford's hands'.


 

 

1794

It was now clear that Dadford's work would cost more than his contract, for he produced a bill for £l7, 221 for extra work outside it, and said that £5,000 still needed to be spent. Soon afterwards a survey was ordered to see if it were practicable to extend the canal for a mile in Cardiff to the pill called the Lower Layer on what were then described as Cardiff Moors.

 

The canal was opened on 10 February I794.

 

'The canal from Cardiff to Merthyr-Tidvil is completed, and a fleet of canal boats have arrived at Cardiff laden with the produce of the iron-works there, to the great loss- of the whole town.... Nothing appears more extraordinary than, from a boat navigating this canal, to look down on the river Taaff, dashing among the rocks 100 yards below.... The first barge that arrived at Cardiff was finely decorated with colours, and was navigated from the Mollingriffield works by Mr. Bird, sen. water-bailiff of Cardiff.'

 

Richard Griffiths of Cardiff, a committeeman, gave an entertainment in celebration, for which the company paid £14.11s. 9d.

 

The tolls now charged were 2d. a ton per mile for coal, ironstone, iron ore, limestone, lime, manure, bricks, clay and sand, and 5d. a ton per mile for iron, timber, goods and merchandise. The original length of the canal including the extension at Cyfarthfa was 24+ miles, with 49 locks, many of the upper ones being built in pairs, or in one case as a staircase of three. The total rise was 543 ft., most of the locks on the upper part having a rise of over I0 ft., the greatest being 14 ft. 6 in. The main engineering works were a stone aqueduct over the Taff at Abercynon (now incorporated in a road bridge) which also carried the Aberdare turnpike, and upon which the canal company had a toll-gate, and a short tunnel in Cardiff. The boats carried 20, and later 25 tons after the canal had been deepened.


 

 

1796

Because an extension had been envisaged, the last quarter mile to the Bank, and the proposed lock and basin there, were never built. This extension was at first planned to the estuary of the River Rhymney near Roath. Soon afterwards it was decided instead to extend it farther down the Taff, and in I796 an Act was passed to authorise such a line about a mile long to the river at the Lower Layer pill, with a sea-lock, and to raise another £10,000, this time carrying a maximum dividend of 5 per cent. Now for the first time there occurs a name in the company's records that was to be of crucial importance: in return for his agreement to the extension, the Marquess of Bute and his dependants could use the towing path for horses and cattle, and could carry hay and manure along it free of charge.


 

 

1798

This addition to the line, apparently begun before the Act, was opened late in June 1798, 'when a fine sloop of 80 tons burthen, arriving from Bristol, was navigated into the canal.... The Basun and Canal for a space of a mile is of sufficient depth to admit of more than I00 brigs, sloops, etc. to ride in perfect safety; and constantly afloat for loading and unloading . . . during both neap and spring tides.' The basin took ships of 150to 200 tons, though most were smaller. The approach to the sea-lock that gave access to it was by a channel up the Taff, which the canal company took responsibility for buoying, and into which incoming craft dumped their ballast when no one was looking to save the cost of unloading it.

.

The total cost of the canal, including the extension and basin was £103,600. This was entirely raised by calls on shares, each of which had therefore a nominal value of £I72 3s. 4d., the first £90,000 of capital being limited to an 8 per cent dividend, and the rest to 5 per cent.

 

A quarrel between the Dadfords and Sheasby and the company followed the completion of the main line in 1794. A breach in the bank occurred in December, and the contractors refused to repair it unless the company advanced money. This was not done, and the contractors, who had not only been completing the works but managing the canal, dismissed their men and withdrew. The company, who considered pressure was being put on them, then ordered that the contractors 'be held to bail at the suit of the . . . company for the sum of £10,000', part of the alleged overpayment of £ 17,000, and they were arrested. Thomas Dadford junior must have withdrawn from the contract, for he was working full-time in the Monmouthshire and Leominster Canals, and was not affected. Sheasby was arrested, though he was engineering the Swansea Canal at the time. It is presumed the elder Dadford was too. The extension in Cardiff was therefore built under the superintendence of Patrick Copeland, who in June 1796 had been appointed canal agent or manager. In fact, the company had been wrong about the Dadfords, for when the canal engineer Robert Whitworth was called in to arbitrate, he awarded that only £1,512 out of the £17,000 claimed should be refunded by the Dadfords and Sheasby.

 

Early in I798 a tremendous, and lasting, quarrel took place between Richard Crawshay of Cyfarthfa and the other ironmasters. The underlying cause was that the Crawshay group, with its big shareholding, ran, or appeared to run, the canal in its own way. The quarrel had been building up for some time. There is plenty of evidence in the Dowlais letter-books from 1792 onwards that Crawshay put pressure on boat-owners to carry for him in preference to Dowlais. As early as 1794 Richard Hill was complaining that the canal was taking water from the Taff that was legally his, and in 1797 there had been litigation between the canal company and the Dowlais partners over the number of pounds to be allowed in the hundredweight.

 

The immediate reason was probably that a letter had been received from Crawshay by the other members of the canal committee protesting against a meeting having been fixed on the Cyfarthfa pay-day, so that his group could not attend. Those present minuted that

 

'They know no reason why the pay days of Mr. Crawshay or the engagements of his minions should obstruct the Company's public business.... They are astonished that any men . . . should be misled by Mr. Richard Crawshay's empty bellowing which here has, and ever will be treated with the contempt it merits.'

 

Crawshay struck back. At the annual meeting in June he was in the Chair, and seven out of the eleven members of the Committee failed to be re-elected, and were replaced. The dissidents were the leading men of the Dowlais, Penydarren and Plymouth works, and William Lewis of Pentyrch, and on 24 September a parliamentary notice appeared 'for leave to make a Dram Road from or near Carno Mill . . . to or near the town of Cardiff. . .' The plan was for a line from Cardiff to Quaker's Yard above Abercynon, with a branch thence to Merthyr and the quarries beyond, another thence up the valley of the Bargoed Taf and on to the Merthyr-Hereford road, and then east to Carno mill at the head of the Rhymney valley, and another branch from Abercynon by Aberdare to Aber-nant.


 

 

1799

Unofficially, the canal company were probably behind the skilfully damaging letter that appeared in tie press signed by 'An Humble Inquirer' a week after the notice. Officially, it decided to oppose the project, and wrote to notabilities for their support, which the Monmouthshire Canal company decided to give. On 14 January 1799 the company joined with the Commissioners of the Cardiff-Merthyr turnpike to issue a statement to the local landowners. This said that there was a legal limit on canal dividends; that the canal had been built economically, and 'finished for less Money than any other of its magnitude, and utility, that we have heard of'; that 'It is asserted that by a Dram-Road goods will be carried cheaper than by the Canal. It cannot be believed that horses and wagons can be made to do this; that the canal toll was 5d. a mile for 25 miles, and 2/- to 2/6 a ton for freightage, or 12/5 to I2/11 a ton altogether'; that with increased trade 'tolls will in time be reduced to perhaps half what they now are without injury to any set of Men'; and that it was 'designed to ruin the Canal Company; and the Deed-Poll holders of the Turnpike Road will never after have 5 per cent for their advance, nor will, it is presumed, the intended Subscribers to this barbarous Horseroad ever have half 5 per cent . . . the attempt is to terrify the Company, to give up a present Moiety of what they are justly, under the faith of Parliament, entitled to: and on which they subscribed their money'.


 

 

1801-

 

By 1801 much development had already taken place. Thomas Martyn, coming from Caerphilly, wrote:

 

'We soon crossed the canal and passed some way between that and the river. Upon the left high on the hills were numerous railways leading from coal and other mines, which bring and deposit the bowels of the earth in barges that convey them to immense distances.....'


 

 

Penydarren Tramroad

 

1802 Penydarren Tramroad

On I8 January I799 the partners of the three ironworks agreed to build the section of tramroad from Merthyr to Abercynon, and a Bill was introduced. At the end of March, while the Bill was before the House, the canal company offered some concessions on tolls in response to an approach from the dissident ironmasters, but these were coupled with a request for an undertaking that the ironworks would carry only on the canal, and were rejected.

 

The Bill was then opposed by the combined Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire Canal companies, and dropped in May, whereupon the tramroad was built without an Act by Richard Hill of Plymouth works, under the leadership of William Taitt of Dowlais, and with George Overton as his engineer. If compulsory powers were needed, those of the 4-mile clause of the canal company's own Act could have been used; there is no evidence that they were. Overton was a mining and civil engineer, at one time concerned with the Hirwaun works, v ho later worked for the Glamorganshire Canal Company, was concerned with the Bryn-oer tramroad which served collieries near Rhymney in which he had an interest, and also made the first survey for the Stockton and Darlington Railway.  This line, usually called the Penydarren tramroad, was opened in 1802 as a 4 ft. 2 in. gauge plateway, 9.5 miles long, from a junction with the existing Dowlais tramroad to the canal east of the aqueduct at Abercynon. Here there was a 'spacious basin, surrounded by commodious wharves, where the canal company's business is transacted, and their principal agent resides'. The Penydarren tramroad was owned in the proportion of five shares each to Dowlais and Penydarren, and four to Plymouth.

 

1804 Penydarren Tramroad

It is well known as the line on which Trevithick's locomotive ran in 1804.


 

 

1806

The Penydarren tramroad seems therefore to have been the outcome of a quarrel. The often-made statement that it was built because of water shortage in the upper part of the canal may be due to the claims frequently made by Hill of Plymouth that the company was taking water from the Taff which was essential to his works, and to which he was entitled. These claims caused the canal company in I806 to call in Rennie to report on water supplies.


 

 

1809 Penydarren Tramroad

As a result, a reservoir was built at Glyndyrys and a Boulton & Watt steam pumping engine at Pontyrun, which began working in 1809, and which pumped back to the canal the water that had passed through Hill's works. A waterwheel and pump for the same purpose was installed about this time also at the Melingriffith works, with which there was a similar water dispute. About 1821 a reservoir was built below the Treble Locks at Nantgarw in an attempt to improve the Melingriffith supplies, but it was not till 1829, after many years of argument and litigation, that an agreement was reached. In 1832 it broke out again for some years, and when the battle finally ended, Richard Blakemore, who had been associated with Melingriffith since I807 and who had taken it over in 1812, was said to have spent £20000 in the courts over thirty years.


 

 

1810 Penydarren Tramroad

Richard Crawshay sat on the canal committee till his death in 1810. His son, William Crawshay I, who had himself had a seat on it since I798, seems soon after his father's death to have quarrelled with his brother-in-law Benjamin Hall, the company's chairman. It may have been the debt for the Pontyrun engine, which he built, that caused William Crawshay I on 21 April 1813 to write to his son William:

 

'My determination is fixed not to pay any tonnage to the canal, but to stop the whole till the debt due us is paid.... If Hall should advance the tonnage we can then do as we please as to going by the Dram Road. But that would do us no good as he would again advance so as to still divide 8 per cent....' And on I July: 'How did the Canal Co. pay their dividend without your tonnage? You will of course continue to deduct all until our debt is wholly paid?'

 

It may have been this quarrel with Hall that disposed William Crawshay to sell his ten shares in the canal to Anthony Bacon for £2 I5 each in part-payment for the Cyfarthfa property. This sale disqualified him from sitting on the canal committee from 1814 to 1818, when he must have bought fresh shares.


 

 

1851 Penydarren Tramroad

In 1851 Dowlais ceased to use the tramroad when the Dowlais Railway was built from the works to the Taff Vale Railway, and transferred its shares. The Penydarren works were closed in 1859, and the remaining owner, the Plymouth works, gave up making iron in 1880. The tramroad was then converted into a railway between Merthyr and Mount Pleasant, and the rest abandoned.


 

 

1823 Glamorganshire Canal

In the years from the end of the old tramroad quarrel to 1823, two main questions occupied the committee; to get rid of surplus revenue, and to improve the waterway and especially the basin at Cardiff to accommodate the increasing traffic.

 

The unusual problem of surplus revenue was the result of the limitation of the company's dividend in its Acts to 8 per cent on the first £90,000 of capital and 5 per cent thereafter. The sum required to pay these dividends was £8,l80 p.a., and even in the early years of the canal the profits exceeded this after paying for some capital expenditure out of income.


 

 

1805 Glamorganshire Canal

About the year 1805-6, therefore, it was decided to return 20 per cent of the tolls received to the traders. In spite of this a group of traders led by Samuel Homfray applied in I806 and again in I807 to the Magistrates in Quarter Sessions to reduce tolls, on the grounds that certain items of expenditure should be disallowed as maintenance and charged to capital, so increasing the disposable balance. These were unsuccessful, but similar appeals in I808 and I809 were not, and the magistrates ordered toll reductions.


 

 

1815 Pen Glamorganshire Canal

After a gap of some years, money again became an embarrassment in 1815, when it was agreed to reduce rates by I0 per cent from the beginning of 1816. This move seems to have increased traffic and so revenue, for nine months later it was decided instead of reducing rates again to charge traders no tolls at all for the last quarter of the year, and again for the quarter following. The payment of tolls was then resumed, but at the beginning of 1818,  13 s. 4d. in the £ of the December quarter's tolls was returned to the traders, and a reduction of I0 per cent on tolls generally was made, making 40 per cent in all from the Parliamentary rates. Nine months later, in September 1818, 15s. in the £ on the quarter's tonnage was returned, and a further 10 per cent reduction, or 5 per cent in all, was made in tolls.


 

 

1820 Glamorganshire Canal

Two years later, in September 1820, a further 5 per cent reduction in tolls was made, and in June 1821 £3,648 was ordered to be returned to the traders.

 

This picture, pleasant as it was for the owners of works whose traffic was being carried so cheaply and disquieting for those served by other canals whose proprietors took higher dividends, was not completed by any rises in wages for the canal's workpeople. The management probably took the view that they should not as canal owners set an example to themselves as ironmasters and colliery owners, for only three months after the last return of money to the traders, the committee asked Crawshay and the clerk to make such wage reductions among all the staff as should seem 'consistent with the honour and liberality of a public body'. Before the reductions the ruling wages seem to have been 12 s. a week for labourers and up to 18 s. for masons.


 

 

1822 Glamorganshire Canal

 In the following March of 1822 Crawshay reported that he had reduced the wages of the canal staff, and the Committee ordered that 'in future no man be taken into employ above the age of thirty, and that no tools or beer be allowed the men'.

 

The canal originally had at its entrance a sea-lock communicating with the tidal river, a basin above, and then a stretch of deep water extending back to the next lock in the town. The least of the company's troubles was from silting outside the sea-lock, and from mud brought in when it was opened. Worse was the increasing congestion of ships coming in to load at the iron and colliery companies' wharves above the basin, as successive toll reductions encouraged trade. A symptom of this congestion is a minute of 1818: 'It being necessary that the two men who assist John Morgan at the Sea Lock be constantly at their post night and day— ordered that John Morgan be allowed 6s. per week for accommodating them with beds, house-room, etc.' To congestion was added the practice of captains of tipping their ballast into the canal before loading, instead of having it carried on wheelbarrows to tipping places beyond the wharves. Because of this practice the sea-lock pound had to be emptied from time to time for cleaning.


 

 

Port of Cardiff

 

1821 Port of Cardiff

Eventually something had to be done more than the lengthening of the sea-lock that took place in 1814. It was agreed in May 1821 to ask an engineer to 'survey the Port of Cardiff as to how it can be improved for the better accommodation of the increasing trade on the Glamorganshire Canal'. George Overton was asked to do so, and he reported in June. He proposed that the canal should be deepened and straightened from the sea-lock to the wharves at Cardiff, where a new basin would be built, so that vessel of 300 tons could reach the wharves and lighterage to vessels outside the sea-lock would be avoided, and that a branch canal should be built on which the coal wharves would be placed. Overton made it clear that his proposals were expensive, and that they would only be worthwhile if the company expected an increased trade.

 

After six months of consideration the company accepted the main recommendation, and ordered that 'in order to facilitate the increased trade on the canal, its line from the sea-lock to the highest wharf below the South Gate Bridge be deepened, widened, and Otherwise improved to enable all vessels that can enter the sealock to come up to their respective wharfs and take in their full cargoes'. It was not as easy as that.


 

 

1815 Port of Cardiff

Since I815 Lord Bute had considered that the canal wharves were encroaching on his land, and he now sought counsel's advice, which was that the canal company had no power to take his land for widening and straightening. He therefore refused his permission, his existing annoyance with the company being reinforced by fear lest 'a very important plan that has been suggested to him for the improvement of his own property at Cardiff' should be frustrated.


 

 

1822 Port of Cardiff

The canal company, of which William Crawshay II took over the chairmanship in June I822, had already decided in April, after an unsuccessful attempt to get Lord Bute to change his mind, that it could carry out the improvements and yet keep within its own land. It now proposed to seek powers to raise the necessary money. Guest of Dowlais and Hill of Plymouth works were in favour, as was the chairman, who felt that either the canal company itself must do something, or must allow Lord Bute to do so.

 

'A vessel with us last summer took in only 40 tons in 4 days owing to perpetual removals to let others pass her. The captain and many others went away disgusted with the port. The proposed alteration would enable all vessels to take in their full cargoes at the wharf, instead of 2/5 as at present, and totally do away with the expense, delay and inconvenience of lighterage on the other 1/3',

 

However, William Crawshay I was against the plan: 'The thing is good, sufficient and prosperous as it is, and will not be rendered more so by any extension—most likely will be less.' It may have been in order to put pressure on the older man as the virtual controller of the canal that Hill and Guest held back their tolls for the last quarter of I822, together with some lesser folk. The same meeting that authorised a petition to Parliament stopped the defaulters' boats, and family loyalty seems now to have brought young William to his father's side, though he still maintained his opinion, for the proposal to petition was rescinded in March.

 

This in turn seems to have led to a proposal by the other ironmasters to continue the Penydarren tramroad to Cardiff, for in June William Crawshay II is thanked by the canal shareholders for his exertions against it. The continuation was surveyed by David Davies on a line 15 miles long marked out by George Overton on the opposite side of the valley to the canal, which was later used by the Taff Vale Railway. At Cardiff there was to be a basin connected by a 21-mile canal to the Ely River at Penarth. A tramroad branch was also proposed to Llantrisant (5+ miles), with a 4-mile branch from this to St. John's Chapel near Tonyrefail. The canal company strongly opposed the subsequent Bill, which was lost, and a further 5 per cent reduction in tolls was tactfully made.


 

 

1823 Port of Cardiff

At the end of 1823 an approach w as made to the canal company by the ironmasters, and young William Crawshay and his colleagues agreed to compromise. In January 1824, therefore, the company approved an agreement that gave the proprietor of the Dowlais, Plymouth and Penydarren works respectively a seat on the committee as of right; that provided after the legal dividends had been paid for the tolls being reduced to 1d. a ton till the balance in hand had fallen to £2,000; and that stated that the canal should be improved to allow vessels drawing I4 ft. of water to come up the wharves at Cardiff. The three ironmasters and Crawshay between them agreed also to advance up to £15,000 for the improvement of the port. Old William Crawshay I, while pleased with the agreement and in favour of some improvements, was against launching out into big schemes at Cardiff: 'A low rate of conveyance is all the Ironmasters want and they ought to obtain it. The improvement and good management of the canal will effect the very lowest rate of carriage possible.' The relative position of each of the great ironworks at this time was as follows: taking 1822-4 together, the gross tonnages paid (before refunds) to the canal company were: Crawshay & Co., £32,338; Dowlais Co., £I5,880; Penydarren Co., £ I,673; Plymouth Co., £10,657; to which we may add the £2,373 of the Aberdare Iron company and the £I,805 of the Hirwaun company. No other single freighter paid more than £3,000.


 

 

1824 Port of Cardiff

A Bill was prepared to authorise the borrowing and the agreement. A sub-committee which included the four firms was formed to see it through, and presumably under what they thought were existing powers, in spite of Lord Bute's earlier attitude, an official of the company was in February asked to 'proceed to take possession of the land of the Marquis of Bute required for canal widening and wharf building'. In June 1824, at the same meeting as a I0 per cent reduction in tolls (70 per cent in all) was made in order to carry out the agreement between the company and the ironmasters, it was minuted that: '. . . the meeting considers that the decision of the Committee to withdraw the Bill was prudent and warranted by the unexpected claim brought forward by the Marquis of Bute after the execution of the agreement between himself and the Canal Company. The proprietors consider the Marquis's claim to the water of the river Taff as a total infraction of this agreement, that, since the necessary improvement of the port of Cardiff is thus prevented, an immediate amelioration of the sea-lock be entrusted to the committee....'

 

Simultaneously, Richard Blakemore of Melingriffith sought and obtained an injunction against the canal company to prevent the widening and deepening of the basin, on the grounds that such improvements would use more water, of which his works would be deprived.

 

Lord Bute's claim to the waters of the Taff seems to have been based on his fisheries, which invested him with the power 'of regulating the port of Cardiff as far as related to anchorage dues etc., and also as far as relates to any improvement which it may hereafter be found necessary to carry into effect for the benefit of the port of Cardiff'. This was stated in I823 by D. Stewart in his Report on the River Taff and Fisheries, who recommended 'that the Canal Co. should not on any account be allowed to take any more water out of the river, nor to increase the size of their canal either in width or depth, without the consent of Lord Bute, and without full compensation for the water so taken',

 

So ended an effort by the canal company, which meant the Merthyr ironmasters, to build what might have become the first Cardiff dock. The canal was, however, improved to some extent above the sea-lock pound. Over the next two years from mid 1822 about £3,600 was spent out of revenue, the result being to increase the carrying capacity of the boats from about 20 to 25 tons. To cope with increased traffic the canal was also opened on Sundays.


 

 

1827 Port of Cardiff

Lord Bute seems soon to have begun some works of his own, for at the end of I827 the canal committee asked Crawshay to get in touch with him to represent 'that the erections and docks now being made on his land would render more difficult the improvements of the canal, and to request their suspension pro tem'.  It was possible Crawshay himself in the course of this interview suggested the idea of a ship canal. as distinct from port improvements, to Lord Bute, for the latter, writing to Crawshay in I847, said:

 

'I shall also take this occasion to remind you that the Bute Ship Canal was not projected in any rivalry to the Glamorganshire Canal, for in point of fact, you were one of the first persons who suggested to me, viz. in the month of December I827, that I should make a Ship Canal.' Earlier, he had said: 'Mr. Crawshay is the verv man who suggested to me to make the Ship Entrance and Dock . . . and begged me to do so, on the ground that Blakemore had prevented the Canal Co. from cutting a stroke at their own canal '


 

 

1828 Port of Cardiff

Having been given encouragement, Lord Bute called in James Green, the Westcountry canal engineer who had just finished rebuilding the Exeter Canal to small ship-canal dimensions, to give his views upon necessary improvements to the port of Cardiff. Green reported in April I828.  His criticisms of the current position were that the canal entrance was too high up the river, so that vessels had to follow a winding channel and needed pilots, and that the sill of the entrance lock was at the level of half-tide at moderate springs, so that big vessels could only get out at the top of the tide, and at any high tide there was a crowd of vessels trying to get out through the lock and others trying to get in.


 

 

1830 Port of Cardiff

He proposed what became the substance of the Bute Ship Canal Act of I830, foreseeing the new basin as being supplied not only by the Glamorganshire Canal, but by railways 'should it hereafter be found necessary by the increase of Trade to lay down Railroads from the Interior of the Country . . .'.

 

The ironmasters must have made their views known to James Green, for he writes:

 

'Since my arrival at Cardiff circumstances have transpired which appear to render it doubtful whether or not the principal Iron Masters of the Port who are also leading Proprietors of the Glamorganshire Canal may so far concur in your Lordship's views of the proposed improvements as to remove their shipping Wharfs from the Old Canal to the new Harbour Basin, and whether the Canal Company may co-operate with your Lordship in carrying the proposed improvements into effect....' He went on: 'I can have no hesitation in affirming that your Lordship may carry the work into Execution independently of any persons whatsoever and that a most ample supply of water may be obtained from the River Taff within your Lordship's own property....'

 

Meanwhile the continuing prosperity of the canal was shown by the further s per cent toll reduction made in October 1828 (making 75 per cent below Parliamentary rates), followed by one of 22 per cent in I830. But in December I829 notices appeared in the Cambrian of Swansea (for Cardiff with less than I0,000 people still had no newspaper) which foreshadowed Lord Bute's Bill of I830, and a committee was appointed by the canal company to negotiate with him over a canal junction with his proposed wet-dock.

 

This year of I830 was crucial to the company, and we may here glance at what is known of its traffic. In I830 it had carried 201,116 tons of iron and coal. Of this total, 87,367 tons had been Iron.

 

This figure of 87,367 tons of iron compares with 49,382 for I820 and 68,326 for I825. Most of the coal, 113,749 tons in all, was shipped by four producers:

 

The great era of steam coal exports only began in I830, however, when the first was shipped from Waun-wyllt near Merthyr.

 

No negotiations with the Marquess are recorded, and in March I830 William Crawshay complains that Lord Bute has made no offer to indemnify the canal company against the injury he might do them. In July I830 the Bute Ship Canal Act was passed, to authorise a proposed waterway Ii miles long and 33 ft. deep, the entrance being a mile lower down the river than that of the canal, with 16 ft. of water on the sill of the entrance lock at half flood tide springs. There was to be a dock basin and two short lateral connections to the Glamorganshire Canal. The estimated cost of £76,669 was to be borne entirely by Lord Bute.


 

 

1832 Port of Cardiff

For some time he took no action. Meanwhile the canal company continued its brisk and endless controversy with Richard Blakemore of Melingriffith and his nephew T. W. Booker: 'Were I disposed to deal in such language and epithets as you and your uncle so continually and unsparingly apply to the Canal Co., I might make my comments on the subject of your communication . . .' wrote Crawshay to Booker in June 1832,while within it a modernisation party argued with another led by old William Crawshay, who saw even then that the canal was on the losing side, and advocated only rearguard action. Defend the company's rights, he said, 'and do nothing more than the Act allows us. I believe railways are better than canals and will supersede them . . . I for one will agree to no further outlay or extension. If the thing is radically bad, it can not be made good by quackery.' These views of the father cannot have made the upholding of the canal company's position any easier for the son.


 

 

1833 Port of Cardiff

In I833 the Marquess decided to seek authority for a different plan, and in December, through his agent, sent his draft Bill to William Crawshay II. The company was prevented from taking action themselves by Blakemore's legal barriers, and Crawshay replied:

 

'. . . in my individual capacity, I can venture to say that the Canal Co. will not oppose the objects he states your Lordship to have in mind. Indeed, my Lord, something should be done for the Port of Cardiff. The power is in your hands alone now.... I still repeat my opinion that your Lordship would do better to let others take the portmaking, yourself keeping every ulterior and collateral advantage.' This acceptance of Bute's plan led to a suspension of Blakemore's hostility, and in March I834 Crawshay refers in a letter to Booker to the 'dawn of harmony' and 'a suspension of hostilities'.


 

 

1834 Port of Cardiff

Lord Bute's plans, recast by William Cubitt, were begun in December 1834 and carried out; the works were opened in 1839. The revised plan provided for a - mile dredged approach to seagates leading to an outer basin, whence an entrance lock admitted craft to the main dock, I,400 yards long and 200 feet wide, which was at that time thought capable of holding 300 craft at once. From this dock there was a connection through a branch to the canal. This West Bute Dock and its accompanying works cost £350,000, of which £220,000 was in cash and the remainder in materials from the Bute property.


 

 

1839 Port of Cardiff

In the years between 1828, when James Green had reported, and 1839, when the first Bute Dock was opened, the growth of the collieries and industries of Taff Vale had been very rapid. The tonnage on the canal doubled from 148,371 in 1828 to 319,718 in 1838, while the growth of shipping using the port was equally striking.


 

 

In I839, the year the dock was opened, the canal carried 132,781 tons of iron and 211,2I4 tons of coal.

 

This prosperity was reflected in the canal company's tolls. In I832 there had been a 2 per cent increase, but in 1833 there was a 10 per cent reduction, bringing them to 85 per cent below the Parliamentary rates, though in I834 certain tolls, mainly those on general merchandise, were sharply increased. In December 1833 steps were taken to make the canal passable all round the clock, by appointing a double set of lock-keepers, and by lighting the main locks, the tunnel, and the sea-lock. Previously, from 1825, working had been from half an hour before sunrise to half an hour after sunset.

 

Richard J. Hill of the Plymouth works had been a member of the canal committee since the reconciliation of 1824. In August I832 old Mr Crawshay described him as having no interest in the canal. He did, however, have an interest in improved transport, for two years later old William Crawshay I wrote to young William: 'The proprietors will never consent to forego their dividends to improve the canal. It is all very well for Hill to propose that; to others it is their source of income and living.' Clearly between March and July the Hills turned their minds to the possibility of a railway, for in the latter month old Crawshay wrote to his son: 'I have no fear of Hill and his rail road, and see no just reason for reducing the dividends.' Another committeeman, however, Thomas Charles, evidently had this fear, for old William refers to him as a 'poor timid curmudgeon', and tells his son to offer for his shares.

 

We must remember, however, that Crawshay's interest in the canal was as cheap transport and not as an investment. Writing four days earlier to John Morland about the canal as an investment for trust money, he says:

 

'I certainly look with considerable alarm to the effect of a tram-road upon the property of the Glamorganshire Canal.... It has been a very excellent investment hitherto for you and might be so for some years again, but I am anxious to clear myself from any responsibility in having recommended the investment.'

 

Anthony Hill knew I. K. Brunel; and asked him about the possibility of a railway. He also brought in J. J. Guest of Dowlais, who in October 1833 had taken the chair at a meeting at Merthyr to approve a plan for a railway, the Cambrian, Gloucester & London, from London by Gloucester, Usk, Pontypool and Crumlin to join the Merthyr tramroad. There is a record of a meeting in 1834 between Brunel and Guest to discuss it, after which the engineer made an estimate.


 

 

Glamorganshire Canal 1836

 

1836 Glamorganshire Canal

Let us now look at the Glamorganshire Canal, in its day the greatest in Wales, as it was in 1836, synthesising as well as we may the opinions of the many who gave evidence about it on the Taff Vale Railway Bill.

 

The canal was operating at something near its capacity, especially below Navigation House at Abercynon. Night working had been introduced not long before; some locks were lit by gas, others by oil lamps. There were thought to be over 200 boats at work. These did about three round trips a fortnight if working through to Merthyr, though the actual passage time if the boat were continuously hauled from one end of the canal to the other was about twenty hours, or ten to twelve hours from Cardiff to Abercynon. The boats were not usually worked continuously, however, for most of the boatmen lived round Nantgarw, and when it could be arranged they moored their boats near the village and went home. Thus goods to Merthyr usually took two days.

 

There was some congestion all down the canal, but it was worst at the Treble Locks below Nantgarw where working turns was standard practice, at a narrow place at Melingriffith, and at the tunnel, in which boats could not pass.  When working turns water was saved by passing boats alternately upwards and downwards through the locks, so making each lockful of water pass two boats. The system caused delays when boats going one way had to wait for those going the other before they could pass the locks. With normal water boats going down carried 24 tons, falling to 18-20 in short-water times, but boats up carried only 15 -18 tons, because the constant working of the locks caused a downwards current in the canal, which made it impossible for a horse to pull as heavy a boat as he could in still water.

 

At Abercynon (Navigation House, to the east of the Taff, and a few hundred yards below the junction with the Aberdare Canal to the west of the Taff) there was a large basin. Here a colliery tramroad from the Gelli-gaer area (Sir Christopher Smith's) joined the basin, and the coal was tipped into the boats. Here also the Penydarren tramroad met the canal. Down this came all the iron produced by the Dowlais, Penydarren and Plymouth companies, hut no public traffic save by favour of these three concerns. Traction had formerly been by horses, 250 trams each carrying 2 tons being, used, and three horses taking a train down with about 25 tons of iron. In I833, after experiments, locomotives were put on regularly as well as horses, the run from Dowlais taking about four hours, but neither the locomotives nor the horses could pull any substantial load up the tramroad, that for three horses being 2.5 tons.  The Dowlais Iron Company's steam carriage "Powerful" lately left the Dowlais works for the bason, a distance of 11 miles, with 126 tons of iron attached to it, exclusive of engine, tender and trams, together more than 200 tons. The "Powerful" returned with 47 empty trams and performed the double journey, to and fro, within 12 hours.'  Another engine was the 'Eclipse'.

 

1834 Glamorganshire Canal

Therefore when about 1834 the ironworks began importing increasing quantities of iron ore, and to some extent cinders, to maintain their growing output, these had to be taken right up the canal to Merthyr where, if intended for Dowlais, they were then hauled up to the works by a locomotive working with a rack and pinion on the Dowlais company's tramroad from the canal. These heavy tonnages of iron ore and cinders moving up the canal had to cope with the existing congestion, the short water more often found on the Merthyr-Abercynon section than lower down, and the lighter loading in any case for boats going upwards. The result was that ore piled up seriously at Cardiff while waiting for transport, and this was probably the trigger that set Hill and Guest off to promote their railway.

 

1835 Glamorganshire Canal

In I835, for instance, the Dowlais company sent down nearly 39,000 tons of iron from Abercynon, against 24,000 in I83I, but imported I5,668 tons of iron ore and cinders against 6,I56 tons of iron ore in I827, most of it to be carried right through to Merthyr, and had large quantities waiting at Cardiff. At this time there was only a comparatively small export trade in coal, for the great steam coal days had not arrived, and expansion of coal traffic was not a main motive in promoting the Taff Vale Railway.


 

 

Congestion of the sea lock

 

1835  Glamorganshire Canal

The sea-lock pound at Cardiff was also congested. Vessels of 60-70 tons loaded in the upper part nearest Cardiff, where the depth was 8-9 feet, and those of 100-160 tons at the bottom end, in up to 14 feet of water. Those at the upper end had to move down when two-thirds loaded to take on the rest of their cargoes. Coal was transferred from canal boat to collier either from the boat to a stage rigged halfway up the bigger ship's side, then to the deck, and then into the hold, or it was unloaded from boat to wharf, and then put into the ship. Sometimes there was not enough water in the pound to allow the bigger ships to lock out fully laden through the sea-lock. If so, their remaining cargo had to be taken out by lighter, and loaded outside the lock-gates or at Penarth, or the vessel had to wait for a spring tide. Naturally, therefore, the bottom end of the pound became very congested.

 

There was no complaint of the canal company's charges, which for coal were 1d. per ton per mile against 11d. on the Monmouthshire Canal. Richard Blakemore, supporting the canal, called it the cheapest canal in the world, and Guest replied that 'it is a very cheap canal, I admit'. The complaint was of facilities.

 

In June I835 R. J. Hill, T. R. Guest, Thomas Charles and Walter Coffin, one of the biggest coalowners, left the canal committee, two more Crawshays and Rees Williams taking their places. In the late summer a meeting of the big canal users was held, at which there was much criticism, and it was after this meeting that Brunel seems to have made his survey. There was then a second meeting, at which William Crawshay II on behalf of the canal company outlined a programme of proposed improvements at a cost of £30,000 to £40,000, including an extension of the canal outwards from the entrance lock, and promised that all further increases of revenue would go to reduce tolls, if the freighters would continue to carry all their trade on the canal. This programme seems to have been tacitly accepted, but what no one had the courage to say face to face with the Crawshays, some were determined to do—they went on with the railway scheme. On I2 October 1835 at a meeting at Merthyr the Taff Vale Railway was formally inaugurated, with the Hills, the Guests, Walter Coffin and a member of the Charles family on the provisional committee.

 

At this meeting it was resolved: 'that the present means of communication does not afford the requisite facilities . . . it is expedient to establish a communication by means of a Railway, which shall combine the advantages of the latest improvements in the mode of transport.'


 

 

1836 Glamorganshire Canal

The canal company then introduced a Bill early in 1836 for improving the canal. As Chairman of the Standing Orders Committee of the House of Commons, L. W. Dillwyn reported on 1 March that Standing Orders had not been complied with, whereupon the canal company gave him a handsome dinner at the Piazza Coffee House two days later, when he was highly gratified by the strong expressions of obligation and approbation which were bestowed on his attention to county business. On 7 March the Bill's defects had fortunately been cured and it was read a second time 'without the expected opposition', while the Taff Vale Railway Bill was in committee. On 9 May, however, the Canal Bill was defeated in the House by 82 votes to 42, and in the middle of May it was withdrawn. In March Lord Bute had told Crawshay:

 

'I could not hold the Glamorganshire Canal Co. on a footing to negotiate with me until they had remedied the various encroachments of which I complain.... As to their present Bill, I told him that I hardly believed them to be serious; but that if they persevered in it, I must oppose it.'

 

The Taff Vale Railway company got its Act in the same year of I836: for the second time the dissident ironmasters had decided to build an alternative to the waterway. The canal company had combined with their old enemy Richard Blakemore, with whom they quickly agreed for a payment of £1,500 p.a. in exchange for the right to take up to I 5 tons of water a minute, to oppose the Bill. The railway directors referred later to the 'formidable opposition of the Glamorganshire Canal Company, and Mr. Blakemore', which, they said, 'in the earlier stages of the Bill . . . seriously threatened the ultimate success of the measure'. They therefore paid the canal company and Blakemore £10,000 in compensation, and their opposition was withdrawn. The influence of the Canal Act of 1790 and of that company's opposition was clearly visible in the Taff Vale Act of 1836: that the authorised railway toll for coal was id., as for ironstone, iron ore and limestone, and Id. for wrought iron and tinplates, that dividends were limited to 7 per cent, or 9 per cent after tolls had been reduced by a quarter, and that the Act provided for the Justices to make a rate reduction if necessary These restrictions were later removed.


 

 

1837 Penydarren Tramroad

A second Act in 1837 authorised the railway company to buy the Penydarren tramroad for £21,000. Railway branches were also proposed instead of the junctions with the tramroad authorised in the 1836 Act, including one 'for crossing the River near Cyfarthfa, to enable Mr. Crawshay to connect his Works with the Railway, in the manner agreed on between that Gentleman and the Directors before the passing of the Bill .' The railway was opened to Navigation House, Abercynon, from Cardiff in October 1840, and to Merthyr in April 1841.


 

 

 

 

1838 Penarth Dock

At Cardiff the railway company had taken powers to make an extension to a dock on the Ely River at Penarth (the old scheme of 1823 will be remembered), and a triangular conflict of interest now developed between the canal company, the railway company with its own small dock, and Lord Bute.

 

In 1838, the year before the Bute Dock was opened, Lord Bute wrote:

 

'. . . if I keep down my charges so as to meet the competition of the Glamorganshire Canal, the same would obviate any competition which could be brought against me from other quarters.'


 

 

1841 Port of Cardiff

By 1841 he was more confident: '. . . a change is beginning to assert itself in the character of the Trade. The ship masters are beginning to say to the Iron Masters and others,

 

"we will go to the Bute Dock, you shall come to us, and we will not come to you"....' He then refers to the high charges made by bargemasters for transferring cargoes from the canal to the dock 'so that the owners of these barges in fact get the money which I ought to receive. This is a state of things which I do not like to submit to, and the more because many of these barge owners are the very agents of the Iron Masters at their own wharfs.... I think that we ought now to get better terms from the Iron Masters than we . . . formerly offered them.' In the same month of 1841 he seems to have given those tenants of his who had wharves on the canal in Cardiff notice to quit, so that they would move to the dock, and wrote also: 'You are not acquainted with Cardiff, or you would be aware that my new Docks are rather looked upon as a rival to the Glamorganshire Canal.'


 

 

1843 Port of Cardiff

In December 1843 he talked of the railway company entering into 'something of a combination with another party against me'—presumably the canal company—for he goes on: 'I have no objection to see the Dock, the Railway, and the Glamorganshire Canal consolidated into one grand concern.'


 

 

1844  Port of Cardiff

Agreement in principle on an amalgamation was reached during the progress through Parliament of the railway's I844 Bill. This made safe the full value of the railway company's property, saw them 'relieved from a ruinous competition, and the Public Interest most effectually secured by a Railway, Dock and Canal communication, in point of convenience and economy not exceeded (if equalled) by any rival port in the Channel.' William Crawshay II as the canal company's chairman had apparently led the railway negotiators to believe that he agreed subject to the approval of the canal shareholders, but then he 'suddenly, and certainly most unexpectedly, claimed such compensation for presumed personal vested Interests, as at once to put a stop to all further proceedings'. Lord Bute thereupon did not amalgamate his concern with the Taff Vale Railway but instead agreed with them for access to his dock at cheap rates in exchange for the Penarth scheme being dropped.


 

 

1845

He did not like the company, and in 1845 said of this agreement:

 

'The crying sin of the Taff Vale Railway has been ever since the first appearance of the Bill in I836 it was a job for three or four people, whereas the letter and spirit of the agreement on my part is to protect the public against anything of this kind. '

 

Crawshay's attitude can only have been the result of personal dislikes, for increasingly severe competition from what turned out to be the most prosperous railway in Britain was a foregone conclusion, while Lord Bute's attitude must have been well known to him:

 

'I will not allow them to dig nor widen their lock or the canal with or without the lock by one inch. This I can prevent their doing.'

 

Only minor improvements were made to the canal after the Taff Vale Railway was opened. The sea-lock was renovated to accompany the dredging and walling that had already taken place in the sea-lock pound, and some of the canal locks were rebuilt. The opening produced two schools of thought among the canal shareholders: those who considered that high tolls should be charged on goods that could not leave the canal, since the rest of the traffic would go anyway, and those who thought the canal should cut tolls against the railway. A Special General Assembly on I5 September 1841 sharply increased many tolls, and two days later cut them by half: there was a further reduction in September I844, and another in September 1846. For some time, however, the railway and canal were to find that the traffic offering was ample for both, mainly because the rapidly increasing coal trade provided more tonnage for the canal and also a rapidly growing customer for the railway.


 

 

1848

For the year ending Michaelmas 1843 the gross toll receipts were £75,162, of which £60,039 was returned to the freighters. The net revenue including other receipts was £16,682, the expenses £6,805 and the dividends the fixed £8,l80. Two years later the gross toll receipts had gone up to £86,245, of which £69,994 was returned. The total tonnage carried, helped by the rapid expansion of traffic from the Aberdare Canal, rose from 319,7I8 in 1838 to 436,982 in 1848 and 58I,578 in 1851, which must have been near the maximum capacity of the waterway, and then fell to 466,983 in 1858. Prosperity did not prevent manoeuvrings for position, as when in 1843 a colliery owner was given permission to build a bridge over the canal to carry his coal to a neighbouring ironworks on condition that he agreed not to send any of it by the Taff Vale Railway.


 

 

Armstrong's Hydraulic Tip

 

1850

In 1850 the canal company decided to advertise 'that they are desirous of adopting a plan or device for loading coal into vessels lying afloat in the canal from barges alongside, and that they will give a premium of 100 guineas for the best model or exposition of such plan or device'. As a result, a hydraulic tip seems to have been built by W. G. Armstrong & Co., and put into operation in1851


 

 

The 1860s

 

1859

In the '60'S the canal company's tonnage fell sharply, from 466,983 in 1858 to 3I5,749 in I868. There were many causes: the connecting-up of canal-side works and collieries to the railway; the opening of the East Bute Dock partly in 1855 and fully in 1859.  A canal connection between the West and East Docks was opened in 1859, the dock had been connected to a branch of the Rhymney Railway in 1857. The tremendous growth of the port of Cardiff as a result of the opening of the docks and the development of the hinterland can be seen from figures of traffic handled.


 

 

1900

The Roath dock and basin followed, and by 1900 the figure had reached 10,300,000 tons.


 

 

1864

There was a proposal in 1864 further to extend the Bute Docks which was opposed by the canal company, and led to others in I865 and I866 that the canal should have its own dock. This activity by the canal company brought an offer from the Bute Trustees to buy the canal. The Crawshays and their supporters were divided. As an investment, their family money would be safer in Consols, but 'To you Robert Crawshay as a Freighter, it would not be so desirable.... I William Crawshay II] feel confident that the Trustees would secure us our present dividends upon as good security as consols, but I do not see how we can secure the present low tonnages, if we sell them the canal. Clearly the offer was refused.


 

 

1875

In I875 the canal company accepted a preliminary proposal from its chairman, now Robert Crawshay since the death of William II in I867, that the sea-lock pound, the canal at the seaward end, and some additional land be let to a new company, which would build a dock on it and connect it by a railway to the Great Western. The company calculated that they already received £3,500 p.a. for the property, and hoped for a rent of £4,000. After surveys by Richard Hassard, however, they decided in 1877 themselves to build a tidal basin and a dock about 2,000 ft. long and 400 ft. wide on the site of the sea-lock pound and lower part of the canal, and to connect it with the Great Western and Taff Vale Railways. Part of the dock would be equipped with hydraulic coal hoists to ship 1,200,000 tons of coal a year. The cost was estimated at £240,000, and the net revenue at £31,967. The Bill went to a House of Lords committee in 1878, where it was strongly opposed by the Taff Vale Railway and the Bute Trustees. The latter convinced the committee that they could build further coal hoists in their present docks, and that further docks were not needed, and the Bill was lost.


 

 

Steel-making

 

1882

The company was now in a bad way, among the causes being the decay of many ironworks as production turned over to steel, the making of which was concentrated in up-to-date plants connected to the railway. The 8 per cent dividend that had been paid almost from the beginning could not be maintained after I876, and by I882 it had fallen to Ii per cent. In this year the company was authorised to make a short railway branch from the sea-lock pound —its first railway access—and in 1883 work was begun after it had been decided to borrow up to £27,500 on mortgage.


 

 

Lord Bute's Purchase

 

1884

At this point Lord Bute offered to buy all the canal's shares, and this time his offer was accepted on I9 November. He was to pay interest at 6.5 per cent on the £100,000 of original capital, and 4 per cent on that raised under the Act of 1796. His reasons were probably many: to prevent the canal company building its own dock or opposing his own Dock Bills (there had been canal opposition to his Bill of 1882); to get water for his docks, and perhaps as a counter to bargain with the Taff Vale Railway. The Bute Docks Company subsequently paid the canal company £3,000 p.a. for water.  It was probably as a result of the canal company's agreement to sell that the railway announced in January I884 a further substantial reduction in their rates on coal for shipment.


 

 

1885

In June I885, the year that his purchase both of the Glamorganshire and the Aberdare Canals took effect, the Marquess of Bute became chairman of the canal company, a new committee was appointed, and the name of Crawshay disappears at last from the records: except between 1814 and 1818, it had been there since the first entry. The new owner called for a report on the state of the undertaking. This was gloomy, and showed that the condition of the canal, locks and buildings was poor. The report ends:

 

'Of the Sea-Lock Gates, I can only say that they are nearly as bad as they can be, whilst the water lost by leaks is enormous in quantity. . . . Of the whole of the property from Cyfarthfa to Cardiff Sea-Lock I may say without fear of contradiction, there is not a single house but which would be very materially improved by the mason, the carpenter, and the painter.'

 

It was resolved to put the canal into repair, and particularly to make good subsidence damage. The new owner also reconstructed the sealock, enlarged and deepened the basin, and provided timber ponds.


 

 

Conversion of Canal to Railway

 

1887

From I887 onwards no dividend was paid, and in 1888 it was decided to promote a Bill to convert the greater part of the canal into a railway. In this year James Abernethy and G. B. Bruce had reported that 'for all purposes of traffic, except a portion near its terminus, the Canal is obsolete . . .'. They pointed out that 'at present the Railway Companies which bring Coal to the Docks at Cardiff have also an interest in taking it to other ports', the Barry Railway to Barry Docks, the Taff Vale to Penarth, the Pontypridd & Caerphilly to Newport. They therefore proposed a line on the course of the Aberdare and Glamorganshire Canals down to Melingriffith, where a junction would be made with the Taff Vale Railway, with connexions to the Rhymney Railway and Roath dock. Below Melingriffith the canal would remain.


 

 

1896

Nothing happened, but in 1896 Parliamentary notice was given to vest the Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canals in the Bute Docks company (which had been formed in I886 to take over the Marquess's dock undertakings from the beginning of I887) and to abandon all the Aberdare and most of the Glamorganshire. In 1897 the Bute Docks company was turned into the Cardiff Railway company, but the line subsequently built by it from Cardiff id not use the canal bed.


 

 

1898

In 1888 and again in 1898 we know that the company was doing some carrying, but little in proportion to the total tonnage moved. One or two steam boats had been introduced in 1893, but they made small difference owing to the number of locks. By the '90's the canal above Pontypridd was little used, and traffic above it had fallen from 284,041 tons in 1871 to 31,113 tons in 1897. The topmost section from Cyfartha to Merthyr had been disused since 1865, and the part from Abercynon to Merthyr was closed on 7 December 1898, and in 1920 was sold to Cardiff Corporation for a water-pipe track. Thenceforward the main value of the canal was as a water feeder. In mid-1915 a burst at Cilfynydd caused the Pontypridd-Abercynon section to be closed, though for some years there had been little traffic higher than Tongwynlais. A final burst at Nantgarw on 25 May 1942 effectively closed the canal except for a part of the sea lock pound.


 

 

1936

An Act of 1936 authorised toll changes.


 

 

1943

In 1943 Cardiff Corporation bought the company and the carrying business closed down, the last boat having passed in I942. A Corporation Act of that year authorised its abandonment, though it was to be kept open until six months after the end of the war. The barge weighing machine from Cardiff has been re-erected at the Waterways Museum at Stoke Bruerne near Northampton.


 

 

1963

The canal company's railway branch from West Canal Wharf to the sea-lock, with a connection to the G.W.R.'s Riverside branch, was, however, taken over by the Corporation, who worked it until it closed on 23 February 1963.


 

 

The Doctor's Canal

 

1807

Dr Richard Griffiths was an important figure in Welsh industrial history, for in addition to his other interests he first sent Rhondda coal to the outside world. Born in I756, he took a lease of the minerals under the Hafod Uchaf lands at the end of the eighteenth century. In I807 he asked the Glamorganshire Canal company whether they would help him to build a tramroad from his colliery at Gyfeillon to their canal by giving him £3,000 worth of free tolls on his first coal shipments, but they refused on the grounds that they had not the power to do so. A year later he proposed to make a canal branch I mile long from the Glamorganshire Canal at Denia to Trefforest, and a tramroad thence over the river for 34 miles to Hafod, and asked if construction materials could be carried free. This was agreed. The tramroad and river bridge were building in 1809, but it was not till 1813 that the Glamorganshire company would allow him to join his canal to theirs because they had not been satisfied upon its water supply.  Though built by Dr Griffiths, we find it about l860 called 'The Rev. G. Thomas's Canal' and then 'Dr Thomas's Canal' by H. R. de Salis in Bradshaw's Canals and Navigable Rivers, 1904. It was commonly called 'The Doctor's Canal.'


 

 

1806

Meanwhile, Walter Coffin of Bridgend had bought Dinas farm, higher up the Rhondda valley, in I806, begun mining about I807, and had extended his mineral lease in I810. He in turn built a tramroad for another 21 miles from Dinas to connect with Dr Griffiths's line, which was completed in 1812.


 

 

1826

Dr Griffiths died in 1826, and his property then passed to his nephews, the Rev. George Thomas and his brother. His tramroad carried a large proportion of the Glamorganshire Canal's coal traffic: Coffin's exports alone were 56,000 tons out of a total of 214,240 tons carried in I839. It was also the only means of transport up the valley until the road was built.


 

 

1841

The Dinas branch of the Taff Vale Railway was opened in 1841, but the canal continue d in use to the present century, as did the lower part of the tramroad from Pwll-gwaun colliery. There was a small trade on the canal in I904, but this had ceased by about. In 19I8 it was described as derelict.


 

 

Aberdare Canal

 

1791

Samuel Glover of Birmingham and Aber-carn (later to be served by the Monmouthshire Canal) had leased the Hirwaun works in I786 and had built a tramroad there. These works belonged to John Maybery and Thomas Wilkins, and until his death had been leased to Anthony Bacon. In I79I the Neath Canal was authorized, from the top of which at Glynneath it was practicable to build a tramroad to Hirwaun. A group of those who were concerned with the Glamorganshire Canal and the development of the Taff valley therefore joined Glover to promote a branch canal and ancillary tramroads from the Glamorganshire at Abercynon to near Aberdare.


 

 

1792

In 1792 there was a subscription for a survey for a canal from the Glamorganshire to the Neath Canals. There was then no road up the Aberdare valley except a rough horse path and a road was therefore surveyed at the same time by John Dadford.lll


 

 

1793

In March I793 the Aberdare Canal was authorised' from Abercynon to Ty-draw across the valley from what was then the village of Aberdare, 'and for making or maintaining a Railway or Stone Road, from thence to near Abernant . . .', as well as other tramroads within eight miles of its line. This Aber-nant is near Aberdare, not Aber-nant near Glynneath.  The Aberdare turnpike road from Abercynon through Aberdare to Aber-nant (Glynneath) was authorised on the same day.

 

The company's capital was £22,500; with power to raise £11,000 more if necessary. A total of £22,000 was subscribed, some by Samuel and Jeremiah Homfray of Penydarren, Richard Hill of Plymouth works, and John Partridge, soon to be concerned with Melingriffith: they put up £3,500. Much came also from Samuel Glover and other men from Birmingham and Tamworth: they put up £3,200. Two local men, Hugh Lord of Aberaman and John Knight of Dyffryn, put up £1,000 each. Brecon interests, notably the Wilkinses of the Old Bank, who were property owners round Hirwaun, and also the Powells, subscribed £7,600 and the four Dadfords, all concerned in one way or another with Welsh canals, a total of £2,000. Needless to say, Wilkins & Co. were the company's bankers. The list of trustees of the Aberdare Road included Glover, the Wilkinses, the Homfrays, Hill, and Partridge, but also Richard Crawshay of Cyfarthfa and Thomas Guest and William Taitt of Dowlais.


 

 

1794

Almost at once it was decided to postpone cutting the canal, but to build a tramroad from the proposed site of the canal basin at Aberdare to 'join Mr. Glover's Rail Road upon Hirwaun Common and from thence to the Lime Rock at Penderin'. The company leased a quarry at Penderyn, and in I794 another; by September 1794 it appears that James Dadford had built a 3 ft. 2in. gauge edge-railway from Bryngwyn collieries (south-east of Hirwaun) past the Hirwaun works and on to Penderyn, and perhaps also some way from Bryngwyn towards Aberdare. It was 4.25 miles long from Penderyn to Bryns,wan and cost £4,000The limestone was used for lime burning (the Company later built kilns on Hirwaun Common) and presumably also in the ironworks. Glover's line had been built in 1780 from the Penderyn quarries to Hirwaun works, so Dadford may well have made use of it.

 

Glover had given up his lease of Hirwaun works in I794; they seem thereafter to have been worked for some time by Anthony and Thomas Bacon.  This date is given by John Lloyd.


 

 

1799

Glover remained on the Canal Committee until 1799.  The period after the passing of the Act was not a good one for investment and many of the canal promoters were using their money in subscriptions to the Glamorganshire Canal and in extensions to their own works. The Company therefore confined itself to operating its tramroad and quarries on a small scale. Work on the turnpike road also did not begin till after May 1803, when a new survey was made and new trustees appointed from the Aberdare, Aber-nant and Hirwaun works and it was not finished till about 1810 In 1800, however, Glover leased to John and George Scale of Birmingham and two others the land, usually called Llwydcoed, on which the Aberdare ironworks were to be built and in 1801 Walter Wilkins leased a site at Aber-nant (near Aberdare) to Jeremiah Homfray and James Birch, who in 1802 took the Tappendens from Kent as partners, and built the Aber-nant ironworks.


 

 

1800

Even before these leases were signed the Neath Canal company were making moves towards building a tramroad through Hirwaun to Aberdare to get the potential traffic, and in I800 the Aberdare Iron Company (as the Scales's concern was called) was itself considering building a tramroad to join the Glamorganshire to the Neath Canal. In July I800, therefore, the canal company asked Thomas Dadford junior to re-survey the canal, and also recommend improvements to the existing tramroad. Dadford reported on 1 August that the canal could be built for £10,500, from which a tramroad could be laid to the Aberdare Iron Co.'s works at Llwydcoed for £1,500. On the same day John Scale wrote to the canal company offering to guarantee a revenue of £750 p.a. for the remainder of the Iron Company's lease if the canal company would build the canal and tramroad, and charge 3d. a ton on iron.


 

 

1801

They could not face such a toll reduction, and nothing was done about the canal, though a Parliamentary Notice was issued for a 'Canal, Rail or Dram Way' from the Glamorganshire Canal to Aber-nant (Glynneath).   In 1801 the Glamorganshire Company were told that 'The Aberdare Canal Company have promised to unite their cut to us as per plan originally made', and as late as 1802 the Aberdare company were thinking of building the tramroad from Llwydcoed to Werfa (near Rhigos), with the idea of continuing to Dinas. This last proposal had been authorised by the company in August 1801, the three ironworks having agreed to guarantee 8 per cent on its cost and that of the existing lines, and the Aber-nant works agreeing to build a private branch from it.


 

 

1805

Nothing came of the proposal, and the Aber-nant proprietors instead built a tramroad to Glynneath in co-operation with the Neath Canal company, which was opened in 1805.


 

 

1806

In I806 the three companies agreed to convert the Aberdare Canal company's tramroad from edge-rails to a plateway, and to make and maintain a new bridge at Hirwaun and a new junction with the Aber-nant-Glynneath line, for a payment of £2,500 from the canal company. A few months later they declined to carry out the agreement, and in July 1807 the portion from the Aber-nant Glynneath line to Bryngwyn collieries was leased to the Hirwaun company (now Bowzer, Overton and Oliver) for £40 a year and its maintenance.


 

 

1808

 In 1808. however, the three companies agreed to convert the rest to a plateway at their own expense and to raise the bridge at Hirwaun on receiving an equal w eight of old rails in exchange for the new tramplates.

 

The company had managed to pay a 1 per cent dividend on the 221 issued £100 shares, of which about one-third was paidup, in 1804 and 1808 from its takings on the tramroad, but now the Wilkinses and their associates, who held the largest block of shares, decided the time had come to press on with the development of the valley, and in August I809 it was agreed to build the canal, and a tramroad from it to the Aberdare ironworks at Llwydcoed.


 

 

1810

The course was re-surveyed by Martin (presumably Edward Martin of Morriston), Thomas Sheasby junior was engaged as resident engineer, with Evan and David Hopkinson as the contractors. Work began early in 1810. A considerable change in control took place soon afterwards. The Homfrays had long ago sold their shares, and Richard Hill had left the Committee in 1809. To partner the Wilkins interest, there now joined the Committee John and George Scale of the Aberdare works, Francis Tappenden of Aber-nant, F. W. Bowzer of Bowzer, Overton and Oliver, who had taken over Hirwaun from the Bacons about 1806, and Joseph Bailey, who may have had local colliery interests. With some changes this group of local industrialists ran the canal for ten years.


 

 

1811

In August 1811 Sheasby resigned and went as clerk and engineer to the Severn & WYC company, and George Overton took over from him.


 

 

1812

The canal was opened about mid-August 1812. It was 6 miles Long with two locks at Cwm-bach and Duffryn and a stop-lock at the junction, and took craft of the same size as those on the Glamorganshire. A tramroad connection from Canal Head had been built about 1811 to join the Glynneath-Hirwaun-Aber-nant tramroad at Llwydcoed. A private branch from the Gadlys works later joined this at Trecynon, while another from the Aber-nant works to Canal Head was probably built after 1819, when they had been taken over by the owners of the Aberdare works. The cost at opening was about £26,220, which was raised by calling £120 a share, though some shareholders refused to pay the calls over £100, and received proportionately lower dividends.


 

 

1819

By the time the canal was open the Hirwaun company of Bowzer, Overton & Oliver was in liquidation, and for some years the canal had little iron to carry. Some of what was made seems to have gone to the Neath Canal, apparently by road, for shipment at Neath or Swansea. Then in 1819 there came a change, when the March canal meeting reduced all canal tolls by half. It was the wear in which William Crawshay and his son William Crawshay II, acquired the Hirwaun works. He and his henchman Thomas Charles now appear as shareholders, together with Dr Richard Griffiths the coalowner. They also joined the Committee, on which George Scale, J. B. Bruce and Rowland Fothergill represented other interests.


 

 

1820

In 1820 the canal company agreed with the two groups of proprietors, Crawshay & Son of Hirwaun and the Scales of Aberdare and Aber-nant, to keep their tolls at the same level for three years if the companies carried by their tramroad and canal all the iron they made which was intended for shipment at Cardiff or for sale at Merthyr or elsewhere (they reserved the right to ship also at Neath and Swansea).


 

 

1822

By 1822 William Crawshay II had increased his shareholding from 25 to 55 of the 225 shares, and in 1823 the company agreed to raise the canal banks to provide greater depth so that boats could carry their full 25 tons, as part of a policy of holding out every inducement 'to the proprietors of the Iron Works to convey their Iron by this line to Port in preference to the Neath Valley'. In 1823 this inter-company agreement was renewed for three years, and in I825 it was resolved, 'the Canal being now in an efficient state for carrying down the increased Trade, that the Tramroads be now also put in a state of thorough repair' Crawshay had now 89 shares.


 

 

1825

Crawshay's efficiency did not, however, extend to coping with the company's clerks. In I825 Watkin Powell, who had been clerk and superintendent since 1801, apparently at £75 p.a. and a house, was found to owe the company £93 15s. 04d., and was discharged. His successor, James Peirce, went in 1827, and we can guess why, for his replacement Samuel Ball was told: 'no horse to be kept, or sporting Dogs'.


 

 

1828

Though forbidden to be sporting, in I828 there was a suspicion that he was sometimes intoxicated. He may have been, but he did pocket some cash, and he too went. At last the company raised their chief servant's salary to £100 p.a., and Thomas Wayne began a period of respectability.

 

The traffic on the canal in 1828 was still only 59,525 tons. The management was good, though increasingly associated with members of the Crawshay family and their associate William Thompson, who took over many of the shares, and who ran the Aberdare works with Rowland Fothergill and George Scale. The trade in iron was not big enough, though the Crawshays had started further ironworks at Penderyn, and also iron and tinplate works at Trefforest, which used iron carried from Hirwaun. In I835 the toll on iron ore and ironstone was reduced to id. a ton per mile, but in I838 the total tonnage at 60,898 was almost the same as it had been ten years before.


 

 

1841

In 1841, after two years of negotiation between Crawshay and Fothergill as the principal freighters on the canal, the company bought from Benjamin Hall, the assignee of the Aber-nant works estate when the Tappendens went bankrupt, the Rhigos—Abernant portion of the old Glynneath-Abernant tramroad, part of which formed the connection between the Hirwaun—Penderyn section of the company's tramroad and the Llwydcoed section. The money was raised by loan, and the Hirwaun-Rhigos section was then allowed to decay, since it was agreed that traffic should not pass that way.


 

 

1843

A change was now coming to the canal: iron was being supplemented by the growing carriage of coal, as the great steam coal trade began in the Aberdare valley. 'The increasing Coal trade upon the Canal' was referred to in 1840 and in 1842 Thomas Powell of Dyffryn was asking permission to carry coal from his famous colliery in containers in the boats. Sixteen steam coal pits were sunk in the valley between 1840 and 1853; dividends rose, and in 1843 the swelling trade was helped by a 25 per cent reduction in the tolls on coal, iron, iron ore, ironstone, limestone, pitwood and quarry stone. Indeed, water to carry the trade was now getting short, and a pumping engine to raise water from the Cynon was put to work about 1846, the Glamorganshire company paying about two thirds of the cost. which was £4,143, because they would eventually get the water. By 1848 the tonnage had trebled in ten years to 159,654, and the dividends had equally improved.


 

 

1845

Before then, however, a competitor had appeared in the valley. In July I845 the Aberdare Railway had been incorporated 'from the Taff Vale Railway to a certain Tramroad leading from the Hirwain Iron Works to the Aberdare Canal . . .', with Sir Josiah J. Guest and Crawshay Bailey among its directors. It was opened in May I846 and leased in perpetuity from the beginning of 1847 to the Taff Vale Railway. This competition caused an immediate drop in the average dividends on the canal to £5 6S. per £120 share for the period 1844-8, and £5 9s. for 1849-53, in spite of which the canal toll on coal was increased 5 per cent in 1848.


 

 

1851

Another railway was interested in the steam coal traffic. The Vale of Neath had reached Aberdare from Neath in 1851. In 1847 and again in 1850 it had considered buying portions of the canal company's tramroads, notably those from the end of their Aberdare branch to Canal Head, and from Hirwaun to Penderyn. Unofficial enquiries told them that the Aberdare company w anted to get rid of the liability for their maintenance, but, when approached, Crawshay as the principal proprietor did not think the canal company would benefit, and the proposal dropped.'

 

A junction between the railway at Aberdare and Canal Head was favoured by the railway company, to get Crawshay's downwards traffic and also to seek coal shipments from Dyffryn and the collieries below Aberdare for carriage to Swansea and Neath. In November 1851 Brunel was ordered to 'have erected in the Aberdare Station Yard convenience for the transfer of Coal and other Materials from (or to) the Trams used on the Canal Tramroad to (or from) the Waggons on the Vale of Neath line '


 

 

1853

This seems to have been done, though in June 1853 the railway line itself was extended for: half a mile to Canal Head.' However, Brunel did not, as he had been ordered, provide interchange apparatus there between boat and truck, and there were complaints of limited accommodation for loading coal trucks from the canal, so that the railway company ordered work to be carried on round the clock till permanent apparatus should be installed. The interchange proved unsatisfactory, however, owing to the 'serious cost of transit and material damage to the Coal arising from the present mode of boating the Coal to the Canal Head and unloading it in the Trucks being found in practice so great as must of necessity prevent the continuance of the trade by such means'.


 

 

1856

Therefore an extension railway, the Aberdare Valley, was promoted from Canal Head to Middle Dyffryn colliery, and opened in November 1856. It was leased to the Vale of Neath and became their property in 1864.

 

The competition from the first line that had been opened, the Aberdare, had for a time caused an economy drive in the running of the canal, which reached a severe point in August 1849 when it was ordered 'that Beer to the Workmen be discontinued in future except in the most extreme contingency'.


 

 

1857

Thenceforward, however, in spite of two railways in the valley, the output of the collieries was such that the canal entered its most prosperous period, the tonnage rising from I59,653 in I848 to 2I6,704 in I858, receipts from £3,778 to £4,352, and dividends to a maximum of £10 per share for the years ending 25 March I857-9. In I864 a decline began, coinciding with the extension of the Aberdare Valley line to join the Taff Vale Extension of the Newport, Abergavenny & Hereford Railway at Quakers' Yard, which provided the valley with a double set of competing rails. By I868 the tonnage had fallen to 93,542, the receipts proportionately less to £2,857. Traffic held this level for twenty years, the tonnage for I888 being I02,800, but the receipts only £750


 

 

1875

However, in I875, a bad year because of the stoppage of the Aberdare works and a strike, a canal meeting agreed that 'the trade on the Canal is so bad that the Company may be compelled to shut it up or sell it ', and in 1883 the shareholders accepted the terms offered by Lord Bute as a consequential of his purchase of the Glamorganshire. He took over in 1885, becoming chairman. In 1888 the conversion of the greater part of the canal to a railway was agreed upon, but not pursued. In 1898 it was reported that difficulty was being experienced in working it because of subsidence, and in any case its traffic had now fallen to only 6,794 tons, none of it coal or iron. The waterway was closed in November 1900.


 

 

1908

The tramroad from Aberdare through Hirwaun to Penderyn remained open and working, though that from Hirwaun towards Rhigos had been disused since the early 40's and that from Llwydcoed to Abernant for some time, part of it having been converted to a railway. By the Pontypridd Waterworks & Tramroad Act of 1908 the water company were authorised on payment of tolls to use the tramroad from Penderyn to Hirwaun with locomotives, and presumably at this time it was relaid with rails.


 

 

1944

The site was sold in 1944 to Roads Reconstruction (1934) Ltd., who had for many years rented it.


 

 

1923

The canal itself and the rest of the tramroad were sold in 1923 to the Urban District Councils of Aberdare and Mountain Ash most of the property going to Aberdare, the sale being confirmed by the Aberdare Canal Act of 1924.


 

 

1955

The site was thereupon used for road widening;, and very few traces of the canal now exist. The company itself went into voluntary liquidation in 1955.