FIGHTING SPIRIT OF TINY VILLAGE
IN 1973, a tiny village in a Welsh valley was nearly wiped off the map over fears it would suffer the same fate as Aberfan. Built on a mountainside, there were fears that Troedrhiwgwair, built in the shadow of a coal heap, could see something similar to one of the world’s worst mining village disasters.
A report suggested the mountain above the village, Man Moel, was unstable and, if it shifted, it could potentially sweep away the community in a wave of mud and slurry. With the cost of securing the mountain estimated at close to half a million pounds at the time, the council decided the best course of action would be to move the families out. Residents were offered the chance to sell their houses and be relocated to other parts of Tredegar. As a result, by the mid 1980s, just a few families remained, steadfast in their determination not to leave. There had once been close to 100 homes, in a thriving community which had a pub, post office, church and school.
Pressured to leave the village, many did, their houses remaining empty and left to deteriorate, with some claiming that would help force the people living around them to go. When they didn’t, the council of the time issued the remaining families with compulsory purchase orders but a public inquiry was launched and in 1988 the villagers won their right to stay.
A few years later the houses which had been left empty and fallen into disrepair were pulled down. Houses which once had neighbours on either side suddenly found themselves at the end of a terrace, while others were left standing alone.
Today, Troedrhiwgwair in the Sirhowy Valley might be a shadow of its former self, but the sense of passion for the community is just as strong as it was decades ago when they fought against the village being razed to the ground. The village features on new ITV Wales series Vanished Wales, which traces long-forgotten but still-important places. Featuring in the latest episodes, the Thomas family have lived in Troedrhiwgwair for generations.
“It was an amazing place to grow up, we had all this wilderness as our playing field,” said Gerald Thomas. “Everybody knew everybody, nobody locked their houses. They used to go on the bus to town and they wouldn’t lock their houses, they’d just shut the door.”
Gerald’s daughter Leanne Evans said: “If you got married you just bought a house in the village. Why would you want to leave?”
By the mid-1980s, though, many of the houses were bricked up as lots of the people had actually left, but there were a handful of residents who refused to go. Brian Gardner was one of those staying put, and as seen in the show, he wasn’t the only one who refused to take the end of Troedrhiwgwair lying down, with archive footage of no-nonsense Valleys women speaking out in a public meeting against attempts to wipe out their homes and community.
Brian said on the show: “We knew the mountain, we were people who lived on these mountains, we’d come from families who had lived here since it was built. It would have been wiped off the map, no doubt about it, if we hadn’t done what we did. But we were like soldiers going into battle, all the people who had left came back to support us.”
A public inquiry found in favour of the residents and while many houses did have to be demolished, there’s still a community going strong.
Vanished Wales airs at 7pm on Fridays on ITV Wales.