Maesteg

Maesteg is a town and community in Bridgend County Borough, Wales. Maesteg lies at the northernmost end of the Llynfi Valley, close to the border with Neath Port Talbot. In 2011, Maesteg had a population of 20,612. The English translation of Maesteg is 'fair field'.
Maesteg officially became a town in 1826 and is celebrating its bicentenary in 2026 with organised events and celebrations being organised by a committee of residents and local groups and businesses.
Historically a part of Glamorgan, the growth of the town started with the opening of ironworks in the 1820s and 1830s. Once a coal mining area, the last pit closed in 1985. With the decline of the coal industry and, more recently, the closure of one large factory producing cosmetics and another manufacturing vehicle components, the valley has become a residential/dormitory area for the Port Talbot, Bridgend and Cardiff journey to work areas. 11% of the town's population speak Welsh with 27.9% of 3-15 year olds speaking the language. It is one of the few areas of Wales where the traditional Mari Lwyd is still celebrated during Christmas.
The community of Maesteg had a population of 17,580 in the 2011 census and includes Nantyffyllon. The built-up area having a population of 21,000.

History

Before the development of industry in the 1820s, the Llynfi Valley was a sparsely populated area of scattered farms. The nearest settlement was the village of Llangynwyd, located on the hillside about south of the present-day town centre of Maesteg. Close to Llangynwyd is an extensive earthwork known as Y Bwlwarcau, an Iron Age enclosure that is probably a remnant of the earliest settlement in the Llynfi district.
During the Middle Ages, the valley was part of Tir Iarll, an area "famous for its game coverts, its woods and sparkling streams" that was set aside as a hunting reserve by Robert Fitzhamon, Earl of Gloucester, the Norman conqueror of Glamorgan. Up to the 18th century, many of the farms of the Llynfi Valley were centres of local culture. For example, Llwydarth, the home of the influential Powell family, was a centre for writers and poets in Glamorgan in the 17th century.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Maesteg was the first place in the UK where Japanese knotweed was spotted in the wild, sometime before 1886.

Industrial history

The origins of the present-day community in the Llynfi Valley date from the late 1820s, when the area's considerable coal and iron ore resources were developed on an industrial scale for the first time. In 1828, a horse-drawn railway was completed between Porthcawl and Garnlwyd in the Llynfi Valley. This was the Dyffryn Llynfi and Porthcawl Railway ; it was extended to the Coegnant district near the head of the valley in 1830. The railway opened up the district and led to the formation of an iron company, which began building a works on Maesteg Uchaf Farm, near the site of the present-day town centre, in 1826. The company took its name from the farm, and by 1831 two blast furnaces were in operation and the first rows of workers' housing had been completed near the Maesteg Ironworks. Around the same time, one of the first zinc smelters in Wales was set up on Coegnant Farm near the northern terminus of the DLPR.
In 1839, work on a second, larger, ironworks commenced at Nantycrynwydd Farm on a site now largely occupied by the Tesco store and car park. The works, which became known as the Llynfi Ironworks, was started by the unsuccessful Cambrian Iron and Spelter Company and was bought by the ambitious Llynvi Iron Company in 1845. The Cornstores section of the Maesteg Sports Centre and the adjoining base of a blast furnace remain as links to the Llynfi Works and the valley's significant 19th century iron industry. The two ironworks, with associated collieries and new housing, transformed an area of scattered farms with a population of about 400 in 1821 into a growing township with a population of 4,000 by 1841.
The Cambrian/Llynfi Works attracted investment capital from a number of prominent figures of the early Victorian period, including the poet William Wordsworth, who was a Cambrian shareholder in the early 1840s, the gin distiller Sir Felix Booth, and the writer and radical politician Dr John Bowring. Bowring invested heavily in the Llynfi Works in the mid-1840s and, for a number of years, that part of the valley around his works was known as Bowrington. During his association with the Maesteg district, he campaigned in Parliament for a decimal system of coinage and was largely responsible for the introduction of Britain's first decimal coin, the florin or two shilling piece. John Bowring lost his capital in the trade depression of the late 1840s, although the iron company continued trading. After his Llynfi venture, John Bowring became British Consul in Canton, China, and was Governor of Hong Kong from 1854 to 1859.
The iron industry in Maesteg continued, with varying degrees of success, until wrought iron making was replaced by the manufacture of cheaper, mass-produced steel during the 1870s. In its heyday, after the opening of the broad gauge, steam-hauled Llynfi Valley Railway in 1861, the Llynfi Works had a reputation for producing high-quality iron. In the mid-Victorian period there was a flourishing export trade to Southern Italy and Turkey; rails were exported to the United States and Llynvi "Navy Quality" No.3 Cable Iron was highly regarded by the makers of Admiralty-tested anchor chains. However, as the Llynfi site could not be adapted for the production of steel, iron making ceased in the Maesteg area in 1885.
During the mid-1880s, with the closure of the Llynfi Works and its associated collieries, the Maesteg district, with a population of about 10,000, faced an uncertain future. However, the local coal industry then began to expand with the formation of North's Navigation Collieries Ltd in 1889. The colliery company was led by Colonel North, the "Nitrate King". In 1900, another company, led by Sir Alfred Jones of the Elder Dempster shipping line, also developed collieries in the valley. Due to the expansion programme set in motion by the two mining companies, two of the local, former iron company collieries were modernised, and two new large collieries were sunk at Caerau and St John's. With the development of the coal industry, the local population increased from about 10,000 in 1891 to almost 30,000 in 1921.
Between 1890 and 1925, the valley gained a worldwide reputation as a producer of Admiralty-grade steam coal, high quality coking coal and what was regarded as the best house coal in South Wales. Due to the quality of the steam coal, North's Imperial Navigation coal was included on the prestigious Admiralty List of the twenty–six best Welsh steam coals. In 1908, the Cunard liner Mauretania was entirely fired by Llynfi coal when the ship established a new record for crossing the Atlantic. By the early 1920s there were over 7,000 miners at work in the valley. However, as the area depended to such a large extent on the coal export trade, it was seriously affected by the trade depression of 1928–38. During that period of acute poverty and large-scale unemployment, the population of the Llynfi Valley decreased by almost a third as many left the district to seek employment in the new light industries growing up in areas such as West London and the English Midlands.
For many years after the Second World War, the local coal industry employed well over 2,000 workers and new jobs were created in local government-built factories and in new industries in the Port Talbot and Bridgend journey-to-work areas. Due to the buoyant coal industry and the success of the new factories during the years 1950–75, the population of Maesteg and district stabilised at about 20,000, roughly the figure today. With the creation of more jobs in the Bridgend and Port Talbot districts, the Llynfi Valley gradually became a residential area, a process which speeded up with the terminal decline of the coal industry during the period 1977 to 1985.
Llynfi Valley metal-working centres

Name	In Production	Maximum Workforce
Coegnant Spelter Works	1830–1847	95 in 1839
Maesteg Iron Works	1828–1860	561 in 1841
Llynfi Iron Works	1839–1885	2,000 in 1870
Llwydarth Tinplate Works	1868–1900	470 in 1886

Llynfi Valley collieries

Name	Sinking Commenced	Year of Closure	Maximum Workforce
Garth	1864	1930	1,007 in 1907
Oakwood	1868	1928	495 in 1899
Coegnant,	1881	1981	2,182 in 1914
Caerau	1890	1977	2,432 in 1922
Maesteg Deep	1868	1930	671 in 1910
St John's	1908	1985	1,479 in 1920

Demography

Economy

Maesteg Market

Maesteg Market was situated at the ground floor level of Maesteg Town Hall and offered a variety of goods until the final stallholder left in 2018. This space has now home to Maesteg's library.

Transport

Railway

Maesteg has three railway stations, all on the Maesteg Line. Services are operated by Transport for Wales and run directly to Cardiff Central via Bridgend. The services usually continue to Cheltenham Spa via Newport and Gloucester with one early morning service to Ebbw Vale Town. Previous, long-distance extensions to London Waterloo and Wrexham General were short lived. The terminus station is Maesteg; the other two stations are the most recently built, and Garth station which serves the Garth and Cwmfelin villages situated just outside Maesteg. The Rail linc bus service used to replace a withdrawn rail service from Maesteg to Caerau, but it was removed in January 2012 due to council cutbacks.
In the past, there were other railway stations in Maesteg. Llangynwyd Station used to lie on the Maesteg line a few miles east of where Garth Station is today, and Maesteg was on the old Port Talbot Railway Line, but these are now closed.
The original Maesteg station was situated a few yards west of the terminus that is there today. Remains of the original station remain behind the Asda supermarket, including the platforms and the bridge joining the two platforms. The old track was removed in 2007 during a land reclamation project. The present stations were reopened by British Rail in 1992.