Blaenavon World Heritage Site

[Harvestman]

I've been meaning to do a thread about this place for a while, but the last time I was there I forgot my camera. I've no affiliation etc, but just thought that there seem to be a lot of people on here who are craftsmen who might be interested, plenty of people who use iron and steel, and several who just plain like history.

I was back today, so here goes:

Blaenavon World Heritage Site exisits because the Blaenavon area of South Wales is where the Industrial Revolution can reasonably be said to have begun. It boasts the first large-scale/industrial ironworks, and is the place where the Bessemer process for making steel (still the basic recipe used today) was invented. Additionally, large areas of the surrounding lanscape contain well-preserved relics of the industrial buildings, and if you know where to look there are lime kilns, tramways, canals, lime-works, ironworks, quarries, and so forth, as well as buildings such as churches, working men's clubs, miners' cottages etc. There's also a coal mine, Big Pit, that you can take a tour round.

The whole thing is really well advertised, signposted, and labelled, and there is loads of information to be had, but best of all, the main sites are all listed under the National Museums of Wales, which means that entry is free.

Here are some pictures from my visit to the Blaenavon Ironworks site today.


The furnace (one of 4) - best preserved example in Britain


The balance tower. Basically a giant water-powered lift (used 3 tones of water at a time)


General site view


The cottages right next to the ironworks


View from the top of the balance tower. You can walk out to the edge, and the last bit is on steel gratings so you can see straight down the shaft. It is enormously impressive.


Stack square. Used for the BBC Wales series 'Coal House'


Some views inside the cottages


A recreation of the company shop, where workers could buy basic necessities at inflated prices (having no other choice)


I could go on about this for a lot longer. If people want to ask questions, please do, or PM me for more information. It is well worth a visit, and I would be happy to show people around if cirumstances were favourable. There are features dotted all over the landscape for miles around.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

 

[Toddy]

I love wandering round a place like that

Our nearest one is Summerlee, another iron/steel making site, that's now a museum of similar things.

Thank you for posting Domestic details would be interesting too. Summerlee has two rows of miner's cottages laid out with interiors from the early 1800's to 1960.

I find it fascinating to see how nature reclaims our industrialisation, walls are just rock faces, gravel is scree slopes, mine workings are bare hillsides. I spent ages just identifying the plants that have colonised the old industrial areas and the canal.
Your site looks very similar in that; probably the only way to keep the re-establishing vegetation in check would be to bring in goats

Thanks for the photos
M

 

[Harvestman]

No need for goats. Our landscape is grazed to death by sheep. Mind you, there are some really interesting plants now on the spoil heaps, such as moonwort.

What I find most interesting about all of these things is that people lived in those houses, for over 100 years, and yet if you look at them now... one living room, both kitchen and living room, without running water, one bedroom with room for a bed and a child's cot, maybe a chest of drawers if you were lucky, upstairs an even smaller bedroom. No bathroom. Water from a pump in the square, toilets outside, communal, and a good walk away. Garden, what garden? No heating other than the fire. No lighting apart from candles or a lantern. No room to turn around at all by modern standards, and yet loads of people living in each house.

I think in the Blaenavon area it is the sheer quantity of well preserved remains that qualify it as a World Heritage Site. I've lived here most of my life and I'm still finding new bits.

 

[JAG009]

Good post,,, i love this sort of place looks like a good day out ,,,but looking at your pictures made me think ,,it looks a nice place to wander round today all green and quaint looking,, but back when it was running at full chat it would have been a very different place


cheers



Jason

 

[Ogri the trog]

We visited that site in 2010 along with the Big Pit site - a brilliant day out seeing not only the scenes from the Coalhouse series but items from recent and not-so-recent past.

Cheers

Ogri the trog

 

[Dannytsg]

Looks like it was a lovely place and lovely day for it as well. Thanks for sharing.