Cyfarthfa Ironworks

The Cyfarthfa works were begun in 1765 by Anthony Bacon (by then a merchant in London), who in that year with William Brownrigg, a fellow native of Whitehaven, Cumberland, leased the right to mine in a tract of 4,000 acres (1,600 ha) land on the west side of the river Taff at Merthyr Tydfil.

[1] They employed Brownrigg's brother-in-law Charles Wood to build a forge there, to use the potting and stamping process, for which he and his brother had a patent.

[4] From about that time Richard Crawshay was Bacon's partner in his contracts to supply cannon to the Board of Ordnance, but perhaps not in the ironworks.

Bacon had previously subcontracted cannon-founding to John Wilkinson, but henceforth made them at Cyfarthfa, as is indicated by his asking for ships carrying them to be convoyed from Penarth.

[5] Bacon had the Cyfarthfa Canal, a short tub boat waterway, constructed during the latter part of the 1770s, to bring coal to the ironworks.

[6] In 1782 Bacon, as a Member of Parliament, had to relinquish government contracts and passed the forge and boring mill with the gun-founding business to Francis Homfray.

The court directed a lease of the whole works to Richard Crawshay, who took as his partners, William Stevens (a London merchant) and James Cockshutt.

It was designed in the form of a "sham" or mock castle, complete with crenellated battlements, towers and turrets, in Norman and Gothic styles, and occupied by William Crawshay II and his family.

Portions of the enormous complex that formed the Cyfarthfa works remain intact today, including six of the original blast furnaces.

Found during the excavation were a canal, tram lines and the plant's coking ovens; until the discovery, little was known about how the ironworks prepared its fuel.