Forge Side

Forge Side (Welsh: Ger yr Efail) was the site of an ironworks started in 1836.

The small village is 0.5 miles south-west of Blaenavon 0.5 miles south-east of Big Pit, and is in the community of Blaenavon, in the north of Torfaen county borough, in South east Wales.

The new managing director, James Ashwell, started to build a new ironworks, to be called Forgeside, on a pocket of freehold land, so that the new company would be free of the rents, royalties, and insecurity of the leasehold of the old ironworks.

[1] Within a few years there was a downturn in the industry, Ashwell was forced to resign in 1841, and the new works abandoned.

Building eventually resumed when the puddling forge was opened in 1859 and engines for the rolling mills were bought in 1860.