An old Chinese proverb which states "the first step of the journey is the longest", expresses my feelings about writing this piece.
My curiosity was aroused about the small hamlet of Nant y Bar in the Upper Afan Valley North of Port Talbot when I attended a seminar held at Swansea under the auspices of the Institute of Welsh affairs devoted to the initial planning stages of the proposed Industrial and Maritime Museum to be opened there. A talk given by Mrs Anna Southall of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales gave a highly personalised and colourful overview of her ideas on the Industrial Revolution and the place, which Wales had occupied in this process during the Nineteenth Century.

Wales had become the first industrialised nation in the world, a fact that we have undervalued as a nation on both our cultural and archaeological past. During the 1840s more of the Welsh population was engaged in industry than in agriculture.
Wales had dominated industry with the world prices of coal, for example being set at the Coal Exchange at Cardiff. World copper prices had been set at Swansea, and the price of tin at Llanelli. Those of the slate quarries were set at North Wales at Bethesda.

Advances were also made in the technology of coal mining and iron. Welsh iron turning was the foremost in the world, with the manufacture of steel rails among other steel and iron products at Dowlais and Ebbw Vale being amongst the most prominent iron making centres. John Hughes had established the first iron works in Russia. The first iron bridge was manufactured in Wales.
Cardiff became the first coal-exporting seaport, and possessed the largest masonry (man-made docks) in the world. Sea captains and crews had sailed out of Cardiff to all parts of the world.

It is with the thought that we in post-industrial Wales needed to develop a consciousness of and acknowledge the fact of our huge contribution to both the industrial and cultural identity of the U.K., which inspired me to research at a local level our input into this huge and emotive historical drama.
'What?' we ask could possibly have been the contribution of a small row of houses situated in a remote valley during the 19th Century? Part of the answer to this question lay in the skills, the migration of people from all over the U.K. and the scale of the social change, which swept, during the mid 1800s across the South Wales Valleys.

To continue Beryl's story, click here to read Part Two.