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All
about the Cynon Valley - Page 8 |
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The
stone bases that held the wooden stanchions are all that is left of Brunel's
viaduct that carried the Vale of Neath railway through what is now Dare
Valley Country Park.
Many of the hillsides that once were covered in trees, then in
pit waste, are now covered with new houses that push back the frontiers of the
countryside ever further.
The former railway lines are footpaths - the mineral line between Hirwaun and
Penderyn is now a walk called the Arcway, the Cwmdare-Cwmaman
line is a three and half mile walk between those villages.
Cascading along the contours of the hillsides are Cynon Valley's terraced houses,
higgledy-piggledy streets twisting and turning this way and that to follow the
contours of the land, seemingly defying gravity as they soar up and down the
steepest of hills. Now flamboyant with colour, they epitomise this and all the
other valleys of South Wales. Even their back lanes are treasure troves of interest
with a hotch-potch of doors, walls and fences, sheds, garages and extensions.
In Mountain Ash, one row of houses that climbs the hillside
has backs that face the road. In an amazing array of zig-zagging steps and teetering,
single-brick pillars the back porches rise high above their gardens. Archways,
doors, cellars, washing lines and a carnival of brickwork seem suspended in
nothingness, as if a gust of wind would bring it all down. An old tin bath hangs
on a wall, geraniums blaze on balconies and large, sleepy cats sit as comfortably
on the edge of the precipitous drop as if on verandahs overlooking the Mediterranean.
The style of architecture owes nothing to any School but everything to all things
eccentrically Welsh - valleys-Welsh. |
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| Brunel |
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| ISAMBARD
KINGDOM BRUNEL 1806 - 1859 - British engineer who designed the Great Western
Railway and the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The Vale of Neath railway line transported
coal and iron from Cynon Valley to the docks at Swansea and in 1857 a viaduct
was needed to carry the line over the river Dare in what is now the Dare Valley
Country Park. Brunel's design was used by the engineers who constructed the
viaduct which was 450 feet long and 70 feet high. This viaduct and its companion,
the Gamlyn Viaduct which carried the same line over the Cynon were the last
of Brunel's timber viaducts to survive. It was demolished in 1947. The stone
plinths that suppo rted
the wooden struts can still be seen in the Park and model of this amazing structure
can be seen in the Inheritance Centre. The model was painstakingly constructed
by the librarian and photographer, the late Mr G I John. |
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Arcway
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Arcway
is the two and a half mile former horse-drawn railway chartered by George III
in 1793, transporting limestone from the quarry at Penderyn to the ironworks
in Hirwaun. A later tramway transported the finished goods to the extended Glamorgan
Canal at Cwmbach in Aberdare. With the conversion of disused railway lines to
footpaths, this path was given the name Arcway after its main sponsors, the
A R C company, owners of the Penderyn quarry. This is now part of the Hansom
corporation. |
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Row
of houses |
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This
row is Strand Street in Newtown, Mountain Ash, and is the last street bordering
the A4059 as it leaves Mountain Ash heading for Abercynon. |
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