Timeline 1838 - 1850

 

1838

October:

Just over twenty years after the survey mentioned in the Introduction had been completed, Resolven would begin its radical transformation into a coal-mining community with the opening up in Cwm Clydach of a colliery worked by level. We can accurately date the beginning of this transformation to the autumn of 1838, as evidenced by the extant correspondence between James Wittit Lyon (of the newly-formed ‘Resolven Coal Company’) and Charles Tennant (of ‘The Neath Canal Company’) regarding the tonnage rates which Lyon would need to pay for the transportation of his coal by barge along the Neath Canal from Resolven to the wharves at Port Tennant. From his home at Cadoxton Lodge, Charles Tennant penned a letter, dated 14 October 1838, to Lyon, who was originally from Cirencester in Wiltshire but at that time staying as a guest at Rheola House. In this letter he stated: “I thank you for your note of 13 October and heartily wish you every success in your new Enterprise as a Collier. From all that I have heard of your coal I have little doubt that under proper management the demand will exceed your means of supply. Our Canal, like the Highway, is open to everybody, and we are but humble Turnpike-Keepers.” (There had been coal-working in the area previously to this:  Cefn Mawr Colliery, Melincwrt was supplying coal in 1772 and was possibly the site worked by the monks of Margam Abbey in the thirteenth century; the Tweedle Level on the hillside above Ynys-y-biben/ Farmers’ Arms was worked in the period 1812-1818; the Ynysarwed Culm Colliery was active in 1823; and Venallt Colliery, Cwmgwrach was operating in 1835. What made the Cwm Clydach workings exceptional was the fact they were the first to operate within the manorial lands of Resolven; the others were situated just outside the boundaries.)

 

1839:

March:

Tenders were invited from Resolven colliery, and other collieries, to supply and deliver coal to fuel Her Majesty’s Mail steam- packets which sailed from Holyhead and Kingston. Seven thousand tons of coal were needed at Holyhead and three thousand tons at Kingston.

September:

At Neath Town Hall, the list of the rate-payers from Resolven and other localities who were eligible to vote for candidates on the Board of Guardians of the Neath Union, was reviewed by John Wilson and James Evans, barristers. (Poor laws, in existence from the sixteenth century until the end of the Second World War, provided financial relief to the elderly, the sick and the unemployed. Prior to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, individual parishes were responsible for its administration. After 1834, parishes were grouped into Unions responsible for poor relief in their areas and each was governed by a Board of Guardians, elected by rate-payers and magistrates. Provision of relief was discouraged to anyone who refused to enter a workhouse and assessment of need was undertaken by a relieving officer, employed by the Poor Law Union, who visited applicants. The Neath Union Workhouse at Llety-nedd was opened in 1838 and was capable of accommodating 140 individuals. Until 1875, there were five Poor Law Unions in Glamorgan: the Neath Union contained 29 parishes administered by 33 guardians.)

 

 

October:

John Morgan was appointed gamekeeper for the hamlet of Resolven by Nash Vaughan- Edwards, of Rheola.

 

1840:

February:

1,768 tons of Resolven steam coal were shipped to the port of London and sold there at the Coal Market.

April:

J. W. Lyon’s Resolven Colliery was first rated this month; its value was estimated as £12, and the rate payable was six shillings and three pence. The tramroad for the transportation of coal by horse-drawn trams from the colliery to Resolven Canal was now operating, and ran from Cwm Clydach along today’s Clydach Avenue, joining the road in front of the New Inn (built in 1836), and continuing to the river bridge and canal where the coal was loaded on to barges. Up to twenty-five of the colliery’s horses were housed in a stable originally part of Tan-y-rhiw farm, which had by this time already been absorbed into Clun-y-castell/Glyncastle farm. Contemporary rate-books show that at this period the hamlet of Resolven had 29 farms, 17 farmers, two public houses, two shops, a mill at Melincwrt, and a lord of the manor no longer residing at Clun-y-castell/Glyncastle, the ancient manor house, but at Rheola House which was outside the manorial boundaries.

August:

In the week ending 29 August, 110 tons of Resolven coal were shipped from Swansea to other parts of the United Kingdom, and 341 tons of its coal were shipped abroad. A few weeks earlier, during the week ending 1 August, 635 tons of Resolven coal had been shipped abroad.

 

1841:

February:

Resolven Coal Company contributed the sum of ten shillings towards the Swansea Fund for the Poor.

Tenders were invited by the Admiralty for supplying and delivering 3,000 tons of Resolven coal for Her Majesty’s steam- vessels based at Gibraltar, and also for 1,400 tons of Resolven coal for steam-vessels based at Malta and Alexandria in Egypt.

August:

Tenders were invited by the Admiralty for 700 tons of coal- dust from Resolven coals to be delivered to Her Majesty’s dock- yard at Woolwich, and to the Royal Clarence victualling yard at Gosport. James Lyon, of the Resolven Coal Company, was successful in his tender, as witnessed in a letter he wrote to Charles Tennant on 16 August “(…) the reduction of cost of tonnage on small coal (…) has enabled me to tender for coal dust, on such low terms, as obtained the supply for Gosport, which would otherwise have gone to Llangennech, who obtained the contract for Deptford.” In his reply of 17 August, Charles Tennant confirms that he had recommended to the Neath Canal Company at its last General Meeting “(…) for some reduction of their Tonnage on your Small Coal” and now recommended that at the end of each year Lyon should present a petition to the Company “ (…) for a return of a certain portion of your payments in the past year for Tonnage on your Small Coal, on the ground of the very low selling price of this article, and stating the price. I have reason to think you would obtain your object and it is therefore now for yourself to determine whether you think it worth your trouble. (…) Small Coal should be carried in Barges separately and distinctly from the Large, or Mixed, Coal.” 

December:

Two important documents, witnessing the gradual development of Resolven from an agricultural to a coal-mining community, appeared this year. They were the Tithe Apportionment Map which was approved and sealed by all parties concerned on 7 December, and the returns of the Census which had been taken on Sunday 6 June. (The Resolven Tithe Apportionment Map, used to assess the amount of tax to be paid to the local parish church, was drawn up by William Jones of Clun-y-castell/Glyncastle, whilst the Llantwit Lower Map was the work of Alfred Russell Wallace who, with Charles Darwin, would later become the co-founder of the theory of evolution.) Both are invaluable as historical documents, but both have some deficiencies: the latter is incomplete, while the former fails to identify the names of many locations. Taken together, however, we can gain a fairly accurate picture of what Resolven looked like at this time. In both documents the manorial lands of Resolven included the hamlet of Cwmgwrach (south of the Gwrach brook), the hamlet of Resolven and that of Melincwrt and, when considering the information supplied by the documents, we can safely exclude Cwmgwrach because it had no real bearing on the industrial development of the latter two hamlets. At Resolven, we can identify the, admittedly small, areas of growth in the hamlet which were centred in and around three farmhouses: Aberclydach, Ton and Ynysfach.

Aberclydach farmhouse and its three adjoining cottages, (in today’s Commercial Road opposite the top of John Street), were occupied by two farmers, four bargemen, a collier, a mason, two agricultural labourers, three female servants and two male servants. In total there were twenty- seven people living there, ranging in age from four months (Griffith Evan) to eighty (Hopkin William), the latter recorded as still working as a labourer. The barge-men would have been employed on the Canal Wharf loading coal from the Resolven Colliery trams on to the barges.

The Ton farmhouse was occupied by the family of William Cary, a stableman, and that of William Davies, a collier; other tenants living there were Anne Davies, a shopkeeper; David Jenkins, a collier; John Rees, a blacksmith; Jennet James, a female servant; and Anne Singleton, described as a sixty-year- old woman of independent means.

Ynysfach farmhouse and its three adjoining cottages included the Edwards’ Arms, located on the site of today’s village library, which was run by Samuel Sims, a farmer and a publican. Among the twenty-six other tenants living there were two colliers, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a tailor, a female servant, and three women of independent means. Also in Ynysfach, a short distance away, was the row of houses recently built by J. W. Lyon to accommodate primarily the colliers employed at his colliery.  This row, called New Row, (later known as Lyons Row and, later still, as Lyons Place), comprised eighteen houses. It housed, with their families, ten colliers, seven labourers, four farmers, one joiner, one block-layer, one blacksmith, one shoemaker, four male servants, five female servants, and two people of independent means. For example, in one of the houses lived Richard Rees, a farmer, along with his four servants; in another lived Anne Thomas, aged forty, described as a labourer; and in yet another lived Jane Jones, aged sixty, a farmer, along with nine other people.

Smaller nucleated settlements included the three adjoining stone-built thatched cottages called Ty Mwclyd (probably an eighteenth-century wattle-and –daub construction) opposite Pantygelli farmhouse, in today’s Woodlands Terrace; Seion Calvinistic Methodist Chapel, built in Tan-y-rhiw in 1821, with its chapel house and stables opposite; and Tan-y-rhiw farmhouse, situated across the Clydach Brook, where two of its old buildings, (later to become stables), were taken over by Resolven Colliery to accommodate the four families belonging respectively to Evan James, a blacksmith; David Davies, a machiner; and John Jones and John Morgan, both colliers. The property lived in by James and his family seemed to double as the Colliery office.

At Melincwrt, on the parcel of land known as Cwm y Ffwrnes Dingle, the most populous area was the row of adjoining houses collectively known as Ffwrnes/Furnace which was located just below the site of the former iron-works’ furnace and today known as Waterfall Terrace. This row was made up of six houses, and its tenants included four colliers, three shoe-makers, a coal-weigher, a tailor and a blacksmith. On the parcel of land called Court Mill lived Thomas Evan, a miller, with his wife Elizabeth, their three children, two female servants and a blacksmith; and, on Drehir land, stood Court Mill House, formerly Wilson’s Inn, and the site of the eighteenth -century Leet Court.

 

1842

May:

Owners of property in Resolven were asked to submit valuations at Neath Town Hall by 10 May in order for a new county-wide rate to be set for the current financial year. (The county rate was a tax imposed on local commercial property which part-funded the expenditure of the County.)

September:

In a letter of 5 September to Charles Tennant, James Lyon of the Resolven Coal Company wrote: “(…) I wish again to repeat that the Wharf at Port Tennant is held upon the terms made in (…) 1838, and the new Wharf on the terms of engagement made by me in August 1841.” Later, it was agreed that the Resolven Coal Company should pay £660 per annum in rent for the use of two wharves at Port Tennant.

October:

 A meeting of Resolven landowners was convened to appoint a valuer of the tithes which were to be collected within the boundaries of the hamlet of Resolven in order to fulfil the provisions of the 1836 Act for the Commutation of Tithes in England and Wales. (This Act allowed for tithes to be paid in money instead of in kind, which was one-tenth of the produce of the land: crops, cattle, timber etc. The tithe owners were usually the local clergy, but could also be lay people.)

December:

Overseers of the hamlet of Resolven were ordered by Neath magistrates to pay costs for not attending to some of the provisions of the County Police Act of 1839, which sought to establish a professional and trained police force, headed by a Chief Constable appointed by the county magistrates.

 

 

1843

September:

Jenkin Lewis of Resolven issued a summons to David Vaughan and John David, both stewards of a benefit society operating in the village, to appear before Neath magistrates on the charge of refusing to pay him his weekly allowance. (Benefit societies, in the form of friendly societies or trade unions, provided financial assistance to their members in periods of sickness and unemployment from a fund built up through dues.)

December:

Resolven’s contribution to the county rate for Glamorganshire was £1,073.

 

1845

March: The Road Surveyor for Resolven recorded that he paid out ten shillings “(…) for ale to men working in water.”

April:

By Easter of this year, Resolven colliery had proved to be a considerable success: its rateable value had risen to £240, with an extra £4-5s-0d to be paid for the tramroad. This valuation was fifteen times more than that of the most important farm in the hamlet, Clun-y-castell/Glyncastle.

November:

Notice was given of an application to Parliament for an Act to authorise the construction and maintenance of the Vale of Neath Railway, “(…) with all proper piers, basins, breakwaters, landing- places, approaches and other works and conveniences connected therewith”.

 

1846

April:

The Act authorising the construction of the Vale of Neath Railway received the royal assent, and applications were invited from prospective share- holders.

August:

Phillip Jones, of Clun-y-castell/ Glyncastle, was elected to represent Resolven as a Poor Law Guardian in the Neath Union of parishes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1848

August:

In his lecture on the coal measures of Glamorganshire, delivered to members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at its eighteenth annual meeting held at Swansea, the speaker, Mr. Struve, described Resolven coal as one of the free-burning coals “(…) admitted to government contracts and preferred for marine steam-engines for its readiness of combustion and its absence of all clinkers in the grate.”

Month Unknown:

It was during this year that the Baptist Cause began in Resolven, a cow-shed in Twyn-y- Glawty (now Woodlands Terrace) having been secured as a meeting-place. Those who attended at this early period, before Sardis Chapel was built in 1864, were Mr. and Mrs. William Davies; Mr. and Mrs. Evan Aubrey; Thomas Thomas and Jonah Davies. Some Baptists followed the leadership of John Jones who had come to live in Clun Gwilym Isaf and who worshipped with the Independents at Melincwrt, but had kept up his membership of Bethania Baptist Chapel, Neath. Another prominent figure was Joseph Jones, who had had joined the Baptists after ordination as an Independent minister; it was he who baptised a young girl who had walked all the way from Dowlais to Resolven in the middle of winter to receive baptism. Yet another figure of importance was John Davies who walked each Sunday from Cwmtwrch to Resolven, and back, in order to preach at Twyn-y- Glawty; he would briefly become minister of Bethania Welsh Baptist Chapel, Resolven in 1888.

 

1849

May:

Morgan Jones and David Jenkins were sworn in at the Neath Petty Sessions as Police Constables for Resolven, becoming the first members of the police force in the village.

August:

A general meeting of the proprietors of the Vale of Neath railway was held at Bristol. The engineer’s report stated that work on the eight contracts relating to the line from Neath to Hirwaun had been proceeding satisfactorily. Some slight delay on the Resolven stretch had been caused by an alteration in the line at the crossing of the brook at Resolven, but all the principal work of masonry had been completed and a considerable length of line had been ballasted and made ready for the permanent way.

Month unknown:

This year saw the construction of a cast-iron aqueduct carrying the Clydach Brook over the railway at Resolven. On the north face of the aqueduct can be found the following inscription: ‘George Hennet, Bridgewater Ironworks A.D. 1849’. John Newman in The Buildings of Wales gives us his description of the structure: “There are six main fish-bellied beams. Four floor-plates between each pair of main girders rest on the lower flanges. Four panels on each side. So, apart from the bolts, there are only four components to the structure. The aqueduct is supported on abutments of rusticated Pennant sandstone, each having three blind arches recessed into the face. The clear span is 27ft, and the overall width about 23ft.”

A newspaper reported: “In 1849, all the inhabitants of the country were plunged into terror at the outbreak of the cholera plague. In submissive mood, the Independents and the Methodists of Resolven held regular joint prayer meetings. Mercifully the plague did not extend as far as Resolven, although it did strike the top and bottom reaches of the Neath Valley.”

 

1850

May:

Lord and Lady Tallymore, who were staying at Rheola House, the seat of N. V. E. Vaughan Esq; paid a visit to the collieries at Resolven.  “A train (tram) drawn by two horses had been fitted up by the colliery agent, Mr. James Lewis, to convey the visitors to the colliery level and to nearly all the headings. The noble party were much pleased by what they saw (…) and went over an incline of upwards of three-quarters of a mile.”

At the Neath Petty Sessions held on 3 May, “(…) a great deal of time was taken up in the passing of the Highway accounts and in the swearing-in of parish constables. A few remarks were made in reference to the hamlet of Resolven whose Highway account included sixpence which their worships thought ought not to appear therein, and eventually that account was ordered to be submitted to N. V. E. Vaughan, Esq; of Rheola for his approval, prior to its being passed by the Bench.”

A new church at Resolven, dedicated to St David, was “built by the liberality of Nash Edwards Vaughan of Rheola and Henry John Grant of the Gnoll”, the Reverend Walter Griffiths having been appointed Vicar of Resolven and perpetual Curate of Glyncorrwg. The Bishop of Llandaff consecrated the church on Wednesday, 29 May, and preached a sermon in English in the morning, while the Rev. Mr. Jones, Vicar of Tredegar, preached in Welsh in the afternoon. The local congregation was supplemented by church members from Neath who had travelled by barge to Resolven along the Neath Canal in order to attend the opening ceremony. The church, built in local pennant sandstone with Bath stone window- dressings, consisted of a nave and a chancel, (both with plain-glass lancet windows), a small porch and a twin bellcote over the west gable. The architect of the church was probably John Loughborough Pearson (1817-1897). The vestry was added in about 1902.

September:

Members of the lodge of Ancient Druids held a meeting at the Edward’s Arms, Resolven and then processed in full regalia to church where thy heard a sermon in Welsh delivered by the Vicar. They then returned to the Edward’s Arms for their annual dinner.

October:

In the new parish church, 18 men and 23 women were confirmed by the Bishop of Llandaff on 5 October.