What3words for the box location: swanky.makeovers.soak
William Parsons (1795-1864) and his brother, John, owned tinplate works at Ynysderw, Pontardawe and Pheasant Bush Trebanos during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1861, William Parsons sold the Primrose Forge and Tinplate Works to William Gilbertson whose son, Arthur, developed the business into a major undertaking by the time of the First World War with steel coming on-stream in the 1880s. The company gained a reputation for excellence in quality and secured the contract to provide roofing sheets for Washington DC’s White House. The works were eventually taken over by Richard Thomas and Co in 1933 and subsequently by Richard Thomas and Baldwins Ltd before they closed in 1962.
At their height, the steel and tinplate works were the lifeblood of the town which sustained families and communities for generations. The site of the old works is now the location of Cwmtawe Community School, Pontardawe Leisure Centre, Ynysderw playing fields, and several retail stores. The only remaining building associated with the tinplate works is Ty Mawr on Ynysderw Road, which is being developed as apartments for social rent.
The artwork depicts an industrial skyline of chimneys and smoke on the valley floor and includes the final verse from a poem by Pontardawe poet, David James Jones, better known as Gwenallt. The poem Y Meirwon (The Dead), reflects on the impact of the industrial revolution and capitalism on the communities of Wales and the loss a rural, cooperative society without discrimination between men on the basis of pay or status.
“Diflannodd yr Wtopia oddi ar gopa Gellionnen,
Y ddynoliaeth haniaethol, y byd diddosbarth a di-ffin;
Ac nid oes a erys heddiw ar waelod y cof
Ond teulu a chymdogaeth, aberth a dioddefaint dyn.”
“Our Utopia vanished from the top of Gellionnen,
Our abstract humanity’s classless, defrontiered reign,
And today nothing is left at the deep root of the mind
Save family and neighbourhood, man’s sacrifice and pain.”
Gwenallt’s father, Thomas Ehedydd Jones, a native of Rhydcymerau in Carmarthenshire who came to Pontardawe to seek employment in industrial south Wales, was horrifically killed in the tinplate works in 1927. He had been in the act of running out molten metal from a ladle into moulds when the metal flared without warning showering his head and body in scalding metal.
Another highly regarded local poet who paid tribute to the tinplate works as they began to disappear was Abiah Roderick, Clydach (1898–1978):
Yr Hen Waith Tun
Fe ddaw hiraeth wrth fatel a’r hen le,
A’r atgofion yn fil erbyn hyn,
Ond codi fy mhac fydd ore, Dai Bach.
Da’th diwedd i’r hen waith tun.
“The Old Tinworks
There will come sorrows on leaving the old place,
And the memories are a thousand by now,
But we’d better pick up our pack, Dai bach,
The end has come to the old tinworks.”