Chapel Row

One of the saddest losses of Merthyr heritage has been the loss of the industrial workers housing – especially as so much of it was early. The drive to redevelop the town in the late twentieth century, and to raise living standards saw whole swathes of the town demolished, and other areas ruined by insensitive modernization.

Thankfully Chapel Row survives as a good example of early workers cottages. Built in 1825 for the more skilled workers in the Cyfartha Ironworks, it has been preserved more for its historical associations that its architectural value.

Amidst the houses in the row if the home of the composer and hymnwriter Jospeh Parry which has been preserved as a museum. Inside has been furnished according to how it might have looked in the 1840’s.

Cyfartha Blast Furnaces
Most of the Cyfartha ironworks has now gone, but the blast furnaces were pretty indestructible, and will probably still be standing in another 200 years. The size of the furnaces is daunting, and gives you a sense of the scale and power of the industry here.

It was these ironworks, and others in town, that created the railways which opened up the British Empire – without the iron produced here, and at Dowlais, Britain could never have controlled the lands that it did in the mid nineteenth century.

Dowlais Stables

Fortunately it isn’t all doom and gloom when it comes to the heritage of Merthyr, there have been some success stories.

One of them is the conversion of the former stable block from the Dowlais ironworks.

Built for Sir Josiah John Guest in 1820. The large first-floor rooms were used as a boys school until the Dowlais Schools were built in 1854-5. Soldiers were stationed here for several years after the Merthyr riots of 1831.

The stables closed in the 1930s. The range was derelict by the 1970s and bought by the Merthyr Tydfil Heritage Trust in 1981.

You can still see the red-brick Engine House from the Dowlais Works nearby – a building that has been designed to impress.