Industrial South Wales 1750-1914

Essays in Welsh Economic History

W.E Minchinton

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136617836
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

South Wales was one of the main centres of the Industrial Revolution in Britain but the story of the rapid growth of an industrial society there has not yet been fully told, since much of the work done has consisted of articles rather than books.

This volume brings together a selection of important contributions hitherto only accessible in a large number of scattered periodicals. These articles have been selected to present a considered sequence and are preceded by an introduction which puts the story of the industrialization of Wales into perspective. They deal firstly with the problems of population and migration then with the basic industries of iron, coal, tinplate and copper. These are followed by essays on banking, and the volume concludes with contributions on trade unionism and building. This is by no means merely the story of regional development since the book has a wider appeal; a number of the articles are concerned with the links with America and with the place of Wales in the Atlantic economy. Amongst the authors are the late Sir Lewis Namier and some of the leading writers on the history of modern Wales including Brinley Thomas and A. H. Dodd.

PART ONE:

POPULATION

CHAPTER ONE

The Peopling of the Hinterland and the Port of Cardiff (1801–1914)

by T. M. Hodges

I. 1801–31

ONE of the outstanding features of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was the rapid increase in the population during the nineteenth century which doubled from 9 millions in 1801 to 18 millions in 1850, and again doubled itself by the end of the century. Another outstanding feature was the attractive power of industry, which drew the population from the countryside and concentrated it on the coalfields. This process changed the whole face of the countryside, and new densely populated regions came into being in Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Scottish Lowlands, the Midlands, and parts of south Wales which before had been distinctly rural in character.

At the opening of the nineteenth century the hinterland of the port of Cardiff was already beginning to feel this attractive power of industry, but its influence was as yet relatively small and restricted to a few localities only. The two sharply divided regions of the hinterland, the one agricultural, of long standing and more or less static in character, and the other industrial, new and vigorously expanding, showed the trend of the future distribution of its population.

The extent of the hinterland at that date amounted to about 504–4 square miles and consisted of the eastern part of Glamorganshire, bounded on the east by the Rhymney river from the hamlet of Rudry to the sea; on the north by the Glamorgan-Brecknock boundary ; and on the west by a line running from the Avon in a north-north-east direction to the head of the Neath valley. The westerly and easterly margins were vague, however, since the area in the west from Bridgend to Neath overlapped with that of the natural hinterland of the ports of Neath and Swansea, while that in the east overlapped with the natural hinterland of Newport. So scanty was the population, however, that for census purposes there were only six administrative districts, each composed of one or more civil parishes which sprawled over several valleys bearing no likeness to future urban districts.

Of the total area of 504–4 square miles, the Merthyr and Aberdare districts accounted for 177 square miles, or just under 40 per cent, and this represented the extent of the industrial hinterland, except for isolated pockets of industry as at Llantrisant, Whitchurch and Caerphilly. At the turn of the eighteenth century, there were no more than 40,000 people dwelling in the whole of the hinterland and its port, of whom a little more than one-quarter lived in the industrial districts of Merthyr and Aberdare.¹ The only places which could boast of more than a thousand inhabitants were Merthyr Tydfil, Cardiff, Aberdare, Llantrisant, and Coyty (near Bridgend).² The bulk of the population outside of these small townships lived in hamlets and villages dotted over the vale of Glamorgan and in scattered hill farms. Though the iron industry was well established in Merthyr and to a smaller extent in Aberdare, the demand for iron had not yet reached the dimensions of future years when machine tools made the manufacture of iron goods easier, and steam-engines, iron bridges, and railway lines caused a wave of intense industrial activity in iron-making districts.

As yet, too, the mining of coal was confined to the needs of smelting, and mines were really small levels burrowed into the hillside where the depth of the valleys exposed the upper coal seams. The great demand for labour which characterized later years had yet to come, and the growing of wheat, oats, barley, and the making of dairy produce still absorbed nearly three-quarters of the total population of the hinterland. The vale of Glamorgan, which for centuries had been more advanced economically than the area occupied by the coalfield, contained many villages and hamlets with ancient histories; but broadly speaking the population was scanty and fairly evenly distributed, as one would expect where agriculture was the sole occupation.

During the first thirty years of the century the tempo of the iron-making industry quickened, and most of the increased population can be attributed to its development in Merthyr and Aberdare, but more particularly the former. By the year 1831 the population in the port and hinterland amounted to 71,998, an increase of approximately 80 per cent in 30 years. By this time the Merthyr and Aberdare iron-works were producing four times as much iron as they did at the end of the previous century.³ Coal-mining for sale purposes had also started in the vicinity of both these towns during the late twenties. The effect of this increased industrial activity was to cause a rise in the population of Merthyr Tydfil from 7705 to 22,083 and in that of Aberdare from 1486 to 3961.

The port of Cardiff, too, benefited from increased port activity as a result of the rise in its export trade. This was reflected in a rapid rise in its population from 1870 to 6187. These increases were confined to the immediate vicinity of the places named. The remainder of the Merthyr and Aberdare districts, for example, which extended over 92–6 square miles and 83–7 square miles respectively, embracing the Upper Taff, the Cynon, and the Rhondda valleys, together contained only 4365 people, or about 25 to the square mile. The only other places in the hinterland to show relatively rapid increases were those which contained coal-mines or iron-works. These accounted for the relatively greater concentrations of population around Treforest, Llantrisant and Whitchurch.

Despite the promise held out by these widely scattered iron and coal workings, however, exploitation was relatively small, supporting only a population of a little over 30,000 people in 1831, of which over 22,000 were concentrated in the town of Merthyr Tydfil, by far the largest town in the whole of Wales.

Of the total increase of 32,619 people in the whole of the hinterland from 1801 to 1831, the Merthyr, Aberdare and Cardiff districts contributed over 23,000 while the remaining 9000-odd represented the normal natural increases of the rural districts.

Where did this increased industrial population come from ? Apart from natural increases, migration from outside supplied the answer. In the absence of exact statistics of births and deaths for the period and of reliable information on migrations of population, how much was due to the one cause and how much to the other must rest largely on conjecture. Lack of good roads and the absence of rail communication were undoubtedly factors limiting influxes from long distances. Consequently, migration from outside was largely confined to the nearby rural counties of south Wales and southwest England, such as Somerset and Gloucester, and to such iron-working districts as Shropshire and Staffordshire. An exception to this, however, was the number of Irishmen who came over in returning coal boats to Cardiff. Most of these went to Merthyr Tydfil where they found unskilled work in the iron-works.

Migration from the nearby rural districts of the Vale must have been relatively small and slow as yet, since there was no marked depopulation. On the contrary, small percentage increases were registered in all areas without exception.

II. 1831–61

Between 1831, when the population of the port and its hinterland was 71,998, and 1861 population increased to 208,145, a rise of 189 per cent. Three outstanding factors contributed towards this development : the rise in coal production for sale purposes; the construction of rail transport; and the opening of the Bute Docks. Of these three factors, though the first was a sine qua non, the second and third became so closely related with each other and with the first that the resultant economic advance was due to their mutual reactions.

As one would expect, the increases in population were most marked in the coalfield and in the port itself. Whereas in 1831 the combined population of these two amounted to 59,215, representing 82 per cent of the total population of the port and hinterland, by the year 1861 their populations had increased to 196,954, a rise of nearly 233 per cent, representing 94 per cent of the total population. Of this population the port of Cardiff represented 7486 in 1831 and 46,954 in 1861, an increase of 528 per cent.

The outstanding increase in the coalfield was that in the Aberdare valley, where by 1861 population had risen from 6393 in 1831 to 37,487 an increase of 490 per cent, while the population of the town of Aberdare itself had increased by 715 per cent. This phenomenally rapid growth was due to the development of the steam-coal seams during the forties and fifties, when the greatest activity in sinking took place. This period also saw the establishment of the export trade in steam-coal with France, based upon coal from this valley.

The Merthyr district, however, made its greatest increase in population during the thirties due to the expansion of iron-making there during those years. Population in this valley increased from 24,016 in 1831 to 69,618 in 1861, a rise of nearly 190 per cent, over 81 per cent of which took place up to 1841. Development was almost entirely in the near vicinity of the town of Merthyr itself where all the iron-works were situated. Coal-mining for sale purposes had not really become general in this valley despite the fact that it was here that the first steam-coal for sale had been produced.

In 1845, John Nixon sank ‘to the deep’ at Merthyr Vale, about 5½ miles south of the town of Merthyr. But owing to the fact that the steam-coal seams lay deep beneath a thick pennant overlay, coal-owners were deterred from further exploitation as yet. Consequently, the population of the valley outside of the town of Merthyr itself was meagre and more or less static in growth. Even in Merthyr the rate of development was much slower after the forties when the iron industry had reached the zenith of expansion. Whereas population increased by 81 per cent from 1831 to 1841, the rate of increase declined to 33 and 19 per cent respectively in the next two decades.

Though a start had been made in the fifties to open up the upper part of the Rhondda valley, the real development of this valley did not take place until the seventies. In 1831, the valley was almost completely rural in character. Only 1636 people inhabited the whole valley, of whom 542 lived in the parish of Ystradfodwg, the location of the greatest concentration of coal-mining activity in the country some years later. The remainder dwelt in the parish of Llanwonno which included the lower Rhondda valley, in the vicinity of the village which was to grow into the flourishing town of Pontypridd. This meagre population represented only 14 people to the square mile in the upper valley, and barely 53 to the square mile in the lower valley.

During this period up to 1861, coal-mining began to develop rapidly in the neighbourhood of Pontypridd by the sinking of a number of shallow pits for the production of upper seams, but the pits were relatively small. Even so, population increased to 11,735 by 1861, a rise of 617 per cent in 30 years, of which nearly 180 per cent was made in the decade 1851 -61. Other less spectacular increases in population were made in minor parts of the coalfie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Original Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE: POPULATION
• PART TWO: INDUSTRY
• PART THREE: BANKING
• PART FOUR: LABOUR
• PART FIVE: HOUSING
• INDEX