Welsh engineer founded huge ironworks and town in Russia

of this industrial capital and the Welsh influence is clear.

Speaking previously, best-selling author Catrin Collier said she found inspiration for one of her novels in Hughes.

Collier said: “The Russians didn’t have the skills, so Alexander II looked to Merthyr Tydfil where John was working as an engineer for Crawshays Iron Works.”

She added: “He was in his 50s when he went there. His four boys eventually joined him. He went back and saw his wife now and again but he never moved back to Merthyr.”

Collier discovered the tale of Hughes through various documents at the Glamorgan Archives.

She said: “He established a workforce from all over the world. He employed Cossacks, Jews, French, German and Scandinavians as well as Russian, English and Welsh before he died in 1889 in St Petersburg. He was a kind, far-sighted entrepreneur.”

The author added: “They faced thieving Cossacks, temperatures that sank 30 degrees below freezing in winter, and long, hot dry summers that made Hughesovka’s Welsh population long for the floods of spring and summer.”

Documents show that Hughes’ sons joined him in Russia and that he went back to Merthyr to visit his wife a few times but never moved back.

Hughes was invited to the country to develop coal mining and a metallurgy industry, subsequently founding an ironworks and a railway.

Beforehand Hughes went on a tour of south Russia in the late 1860s and decided to settle in the valley of Donetz.

In 1869 he formed the New Russia Company and established the works around 60 miles from a major port.

The metal works was close to the river at a site near the village of Alexandrovka, with the Hughes factory giving its name to the settlement and the town, Hughesovka – written as Yuzovka in Ukrainian – grew rapidly and became one of the biggest industrial centres of the Russian Empire.

The Glamorgan Archives said in the first decade of the 20th century there were around 50,000 people – most of them working for or dependent on the works – living in Hughesovka.

According to a report from September 1943 in the Western Mail, many of the workers Hughes initially took with him came from Merthyr, Dowlais and Rhymney.

The article, written by Cardiff University College history lecturer David Williams said: “This Welsh migration to Russia, strange though it undoubtedly was, may not have seemed so strange in the 19th century.

“The dependence of south Wales on the Russian trade was such that any falling off in it produced unemployment and distress in Merthyr and Dowlais.”

The article refers to newspaper reports from 1869, when Hughes founded the works, about “emigration mania”.

Mr Williams said: “It was a common sight at the stations of Merthyr and Aberdare on a Monday morning to see the platforms crowded with relatives bidding farewell to those about to leave.”

Hughes is credited with having provided a hospital, schools, bath houses, tea rooms, a fire brigade and an Anglican church to serve his workers.

The town was renamed Stalino after the Russian revolution in 1917, before growing into the modern-day city of Donetsk in what is now Ukraine.

Hughes died only 20 years after he found the company and the management of the works was carried on by his four sons.

Following the revolution most of the British families left Hughesovka and returned home. Although the city would now be unrecognisable to Hughes, his legacy still has an impact.

Various monuments and commemorations have been held to remember his influence, and his efforts even inspired the Manic Street Preachers song Dreaming A City (Hughesovka).