Stunning images reveal the mysteries of Valleys tunnel
THESE are the magical new images of the Rhondda Tunnel, showing a recently discovered expanse of water.
The stunning pictures taken by journalist and photographer Graham Bickerdike follow a thorough structural check of the tunnel by engineers Balfour Beatty, which was recently carried out over a two-week period.
The water was discovered when engineers carefully drilled through a wall built around a 100 metres from the Blaengwynfi end of the tunnel.
Engineers discovered the water emanated from a blocked drain above the tunnel entrance.
Stretching 3,443 yards from Blaencwm in the Rhondda Valley to Blaengwynfi in the Afan Valley, the Rhondda Tunnel was closed in 1968. Both ends of the tunnel were filled in and landscaped over between 1979 and 1980.
Completed in 1890, the Rhondda Tunnel is a feat of Victorian engineering built to connect the coalfields of the upper Rhondda with Swansea Bay. And there it has lain buried ever since – an invisible memorial to the Valleys’ mining heritage.
Now the Rhondda Tunnel Society has launched a bid to reopen the tunnel as the longest cycle and walking tunnel in Europe and the secondlongest in the world.
The tunnel is currently under the control of Highways England, which is happy to pass it over to the Welsh Government.
However, until ownership is under Welsh control, it means that the Rhondda Tunnel Society can’t yet apply for the sorts of multi-million-pound grants and funds delivered by organisations such as the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.
Nevertheless, a £90,000 grant from the local Pen-yCymoedd Wind Farm Fund – a community fund offering grants to community organisations in the Rhondda Valley – has provided a lifeline for the Rhondda Tunnel Society, providing the money to undertake a thorough structural check of the tunnel that they hope will lead to Welsh Government taking ownership of the tunnel.
The newly-released pictures show it is in great shape, a fact confirmed by an engineer from Balfour Beatty who recently said 95% of the tunnel is in as good a condition as when it opened, and that there was nothing down there that was not fixable.
The Rhondda Tunnel Society will now present the report by engineers Balfour Beatty, plus a business plan showing how the whole project can pay for itself, to the Welsh Government later this year.
Rhondda Tunnel Society chairman Stephen Mackey said: “There’s a tremendous amount of support for this. The project has captured the imagination of so many people. We’ve got an awful lot of support from local politicians on both sides of the tunnel.”