Pre-history Peoples migrating north from Europe had lived in the area for many thousands of years. The
archaeological record starts from about 1000 BCE with the
Celts. From their language, the
Welsh language developed.
Hillforts were built during the
Iron Age and the tribe that inhabited them in the south of Wales was called the
Silures, according to
Tacitus, the Roman historian of the
Roman invaders.
The Roman invasion The Romans arrived in Wales by about 47–53 CE and established a network of
forts, with
roads to link them. They had to fight hard to consolidate their conquests, and in 74 CE they built an
auxiliary fortress at
Penydarren, overlooking the
River Taff. It covered an area of about three
hectares, and formed part of the network of roads and fortifications; remains were found underneath the
Merthyr Town F.C. football ground. A road ran north–south through the area, linking the southern coast with
Mid Wales and
Watling Street via
Brecon. Parts of this and other roads, including
Sarn Helen, can be traced and walked. The
Silures resisted this invasion fiercely from their mountain strongholds, but the
Roman army eventually prevailed. In time, relative peace was established, and the Penydarren fortress was abandoned by about 120 CE. This was bad for the local economy, which had come to rely upon supplying the fortress with beef and grain, and imported items such as oysters from the coast. The Romans had intermarried with local women and many auxiliary veterans had settled on farms locally. With the
decline of the Roman Empire,
Roman legions were withdrawn about 380 CE. By 402, the Roman army in Britain consisted mostly of Germanic troops and local recruits; the cream of the army had been withdrawn to the continent of Europe. Sometime in that period, Irish Dalriadans (Scots) and
Picts attacked and breached
Hadrian's Wall. During the 4th and 5th centuries the coasts of Cambria (Wales) had been subject to the raids of Irish pirates, in much the same way as the south and east coasts of Britain had been raided by
Saxon pirates from across the
North Sea. Around the middle of the 5th century, Irish settlements had been established around
Swansea, the
Gower Peninsula,
Carmarthenshire, and in
Pembrokeshire and eventually petty kingdoms were established as far inland as Brecon.
The coming of Christianity The Latin language and some
Roman customs and culture became established before the withdrawal of the Roman army. The
Christian religion was introduced throughout much of Wales by the Romans, but locally it may have been introduced later by monks from Ireland and France, who made their way into the region following rivers and valleys.
Local legends Local tradition holds that, around 480 CE, a girl called
Tydfil, daughter of a local chieftain named
Brychan, was an early local convert to Christianity, and was murdered by either
Welsh or
Saxon pagans, and buried in the town. The girl was considered a
martyr after her death.
Merthyr translates to "martyr" in English, and tradition holds that when the town was founded, the name was chosen in her honour. A church was eventually built on the traditional site of her burial.
The Normans For several hundred years the valley of the
River Taff was heavily wooded, with a few scattered farms on the mountain slopes.
Norman barons moved in after the
Norman Conquest of England, but by 1093 they occupied only the lowlands; the uplands remained in the hands of the local Welsh rulers. There were conflicts between the barons and the families descended from the Welsh princes, and control of the land passed to and fro in the
Welsh Marches. During this time
Morlais Castle was built two miles north of the town.
Early modern Merthyr No permanent settlement was formed until well into the
Middle Ages. People continued to be self-sufficient, living by farming and later by trading. Merthyr was little more than a village. An
ironworks existed in the parish in the
Elizabethan period, but it did not survive beyond the early 1640s at the latest. In 1754, it was recorded that the valley was almost entirely populated by shepherds. Farm produce was traded at a number of markets and fairs, notably the Waun Fair above
Dowlais.
The Industrial Revolution Influence and growth of iron industry Merthyr was close to reserves of iron ore, coal, limestone, timber and water, making it an ideal site for ironworks. Small-scale iron working and coal mining had been carried out at some places in South Wales since the Tudor period, but in the wake of the
Industrial Revolution the demand for iron led to the rapid expansion of Merthyr's iron operations. By the peak of the revolution, the districts of Merthyr housed four of the greatest ironworks in the world:
Dowlais Ironworks,
Plymouth Ironworks,
Cyfarthfa Ironworks and
Penydarren. The companies were mainly owned by two dynasties, the Guest and
Crawshay families. Starting in the late 1740s, land within the Merthyr district was gradually being leased for the smelting of iron to meet the growing demand, with the expansion of smaller furnaces dotted around South Wales. It was the need to export goods from Cyfarthfa that led to the construction of the
Glamorganshire Canal running from their works right down the valley to Cardiff Bay, stimulating other businesses along the way. was built to carry the
Brecon and Merthyr Railway. During the first few decades of the 19th century, the ironworks at Cyfarthfa (and neighbouring Dowlais) continued to expand, and at their height were the most productive ironworks in the world: 50,000 tons of rails left just one ironworks in 1844, for the railways across Russia to Siberia. With the growing industry in Merthyr, several railway companies established routes linking the works with ports and other parts of Britain. They included the Brecon and Merthyr Railway,
Vale of Neath Railway,
Taff Vale Railway and
Great Western Railway. They often shared routes to allow access to coal mines and ironworks through rugged country, which presented great engineering challenges. According to David Williams, in 1804, the world's first railway steam locomotive, "The Iron Horse", developed by the Cornish engineer
Richard Trevithick, pulled 10 tons of iron with passengers on the new
Merthyr Tramroad from Penydarren to
Quakers Yard. He also claims that this was the "first 'railway' and the work of George Stephenson was merely an improvement upon it". Famously, upon visiting Merthyr in 1850,
Thomas Carlyle wrote that the town was filled with such "unguided, hard-worked, fierce, and miserable-looking sons of Adam I never saw before. Ah me! It is like a vision of Hell, and will never leave me, that of these poor creatures broiling, all in sweat and dirt, amid their furnaces, pits, and rolling mills."
Living conditions in the China district China was the name given to a nineteenth-century slum in the Pont-Storehouse area of Merthyr Tydfil. This was not a '
Chinatown' in the modern sense, and its residents were mainly English, Irish and Welsh. The inhabitants of China were seen as a separate class, away from the respectable areas of Merthyr, and were clearly recognisable by their lifestyle and appearance. In his article,
In search of the Celestial Empire, historian Keith Strange compares China to areas of Liverpool, Nottingham and Derby, and states that this area was just as bad if not worse than those "little Sodoms". There were at least 1,500 people living in the slum, the inhabitants of which were the poorest of society and had a bad reputation. Their living conditions were some of the most squalid in Britain. The slum was based around narrow streets, badly ventilated and full of crowded houses that led to festering diseases. China became known as "Little Hell" and was notorious for having no toilets but open sewers, which caused diseases such as
cholera and
typhoid.
The Merthyr Rising With the
Industrial Revolution came a sharp decline in young men working in agriculture, who were attracted by higher wages paid in industries such as iron. In 1829, the depression hit Merthyr hard, as ironmasters responded with dismissals, wage cuts and short-term working. Any sudden downturn in the market plunged workers into hardship, widening the class distinctions. The
Merthyr Rising of 1831 was precipitated by ruthless collection of debts, frequent wage reductions, and imposition of
truck shops. Some workers were paid in specially minted coins or credit notes known as "truck", which could be spent only at shops owned by their employers. Many workers objected to the price and quality of goods sold there. Throughout May 1831, the coal miners and others who worked for
William Crawshay took to the streets of Merthyr Tydfil, calling for reform, and protesting against the lowering of their wages and general unemployment. Between 7,000 and 10,000 workers marched, and for four days magistrates and ironmasters were under siege in the Castle Hotel, with the protesters effectively controlling the town. Soldiers called in from
Brecon clashed with the rioters, and several on both sides were killed. Despite the hope of negotiating with the owners, the skilled workers lost control of the movement. Several supposed leaders of the riots were arrested. One of them, Richard Lewis, popularly known as
Dic Penderyn, was hanged for stabbing a soldier in the leg, becoming known as the first local working-class martyr. It was claimed in 1876 that it was not Lewis who stabbed Black, but another man, Ianto Parker, who fled to America after the incident to avoid prosecution. Such claims have never been fully verified, although Lewis's innocence is widely accepted in Merthyr. The Chartist movement of 1831 did not consider the reforms put forward by
The Reform Act of 1832 to be extensive enough.
The Pen-y-Darren locomotive In 1802, Homfray, the Master of the Penydarren Ironworks, commissioned engineer Richard Trevithick to build one of his high-pressure steam engines to drive a
hammer at the Penydarren Ironworks. With the assistance of works engineer Rees Jones, Trevithick mounted the engine on wheels and turned it into a locomotive. In 1803, Trevithick sold the patents for his locomotives to Homfray. Homfray was so impressed with Trevithick's locomotive that he made another bet with Crawshay, this time for 500
guineas so that it could haul 10
tons of iron along the
Merthyr Tydfil Tramroad from Penydarren to
Abercynon , a distance of . Amid great public interest on 21 February 1804, it successfully carried 11.24 tons of coal, five wagons and 70 men over the full distance in 4 hours and 5 minutes, at an average speed of . As well as Homfray, Crawshay and the passengers, other witnesses included Mr Giddy, a respected patron of Trevithick, and an "engineer from the Government". The latter was probably a safety inspector, who would have been particularly interested in the boiler's ability to withstand high steam pressures. This allowed others to develop Trevithick's ideas; some claim the modern railway system was born in Merthyr Tydfil. In modern Merthyr, behind the monument to Trevithick's locomotive, is a stone wall, the sole remainder of the former boundary wall of Penydarren House. There is a full-scale working replica of Trevithick's 1804 steam-powered railway locomotive in the
National Waterfront Museum, Swansea.
The decline of coal and iron blast furnaces The population of Merthyr reached 51,949 in 1861, but then went into decline for several years. As the 19th century progressed, Merthyr's inland location became increasingly disadvantageous for iron production. Penydarren closed in 1859 and Plymouth in 1880; thereafter some ironworkers migrated to the United States or even
Ukraine, where Merthyr engineer
John Hughes established an ironworks in 1869, creating the new city of
Donetsk in the process. Cyfarthfa, the former home of the ironmaster
William Crawshay II, an opulent mock castle, is now a museum. It houses a number of paintings of the town, a large collection of artefacts from the town's Industrial Revolution period, and a notable collection of
Egyptian tomb artefacts, including several
sarcophagi. In 1992, while testing a new
angina treatment in Merthyr Tydfil, researchers discovered that the new drug had erection-stimulating side effects for some of the healthy volunteers in the trial study. This discovery formed the basis for
Viagra. In 2006, inventor Howard Stapleton, based in Merthyr Tydfil, developed the technology that gave rise to the recent mosquitotone or
Teen Buzz phenomenon. In September 2021, Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council announced a bid to apply for city status, to be coordinated by urban economic and social researcher Dr Jane Croad. ==The Welsh language==