4/5/2006

Blaenavon's role in the Industrial Revolution is celebrated in a new guidebook to Blaenavon Ironworks and World Heritage Landscape published by Cadw, the Welsh Assembly Government's historic environment service.

Written by Dr Peter Wakelin, now Secretary of Aberystwyth-based Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, and a key player in the inscription of Blaenavon as a World Heritage Site in 2000, the book includes a number of specially commissioned illustrations depicting the site as it would have appeared in its heyday in the nineteenth century.

By the 1840s, the iron industry had drawn in 150,000 people so that by 1851, the number of Welsh people employed in industry exceeded these in agriculture, giving Wales a claim to be the very first industrial nation. Today, the site is the most complete iron works of its date and type in the world.

The launch of the guidebook coincides with the completion of interpretative and conservation works on two of the cottages in Engine Row at the heart of the Ironworks site. Built in 1788 the row of houses was constructed to attract skilled workers to help set up the Ironworks. One of the cottages has been furnished to suggest the house of a foreman in 1790 and the other as it might have been for a labouring family half a century later. The other cottages in the row contain an exhibition and models of the site and surrounding landscape. Engine Row was lived in until the 1960s and is a rare surviving example of early iron company houses.

These houses were a great improvement over the one room hovels of many rural labouers or the typical one-up, one-down houses of industrial workers. Built of local stone and lime washed against the weather, the terraced plan and the brick arches were typical of Midlands-style workers' houses, but the oak roofs and stairs follow local carpentry traditions.

Alun Pugh AM, said, "Blaenavon was one of the great driving forces of the Industrial Revolution and the amazing story of this historic site, told in great detail in this fantastic guidebook, mirrors the important role Wales as a whole played as the engine room of the world. Blaenavon's status as a World Heritage Site places the revolution forged in south Wales in the same class as the foundation of ancient civilization or the rise of the Renaissance.

"It's incredible to think that by 1830 south Wales made 40% of all the iron in Britain itself the largest iron-producing country in the world. With the completion of the presentation of the Engine Row cottages, it is also now possible to picture the incredible human achievements of countless workers, faced with often extremely difficult working and living conditions."

The guidebook, available from Cadw and priced at £3.50 also contains a number of suggested tours for exploring the wider Blaenavon Industrial Landscape. Locations include, Govilon Wharf, Pwlldu, Pen-ffordd-goch, Garnddyrys Forge and Big Pit.