Aberdare Urban District

The Council existed until 1973 and replaced the Aberdare Local Board of Health which had functioned since the 1840s.

From the outset there was a strong representation on the Council of middle-class nonconformist liberals, who were typical of the new elite who rose to prominence in Wales in the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods.

In the years leading up to the First World War, representatives of the Labour Party began to gain ground.

At the initial election, miners' agent David Morgan had been heavily defeated and the workers' candidates made little headway until the turn of the century, and the Town and Gadlys wards remained barren territory for Labour candidates for many years.

In 1974 the authority was abolished, and together with the former urban district of Mountain Ash and some outlying areas, formed the Cynon Valley Borough Council which, in turn, was subsumed into the unitary authority of Rhondda Cynon Taf in 1996.