The area was referred to and written as Ynys Owen as early as 1630, noting that the narrow valley was heavily wooded, with various traditional longhouse (tyddyn) farms marking out the rural territories.

[5][6][7] In 1908 the first Roman Catholic church [8] dedicated to St Benedict was officially opened by John Hedley (bishop), an attractive stone building, the entrance of which was later surrounded by a fine avenue of trees.

In 1926 a new parish priest, Fr Arthur Jordan arrived and confronted with the task of building a new church because the original had been condemned due to subsidence.

[citation needed] Zion and Calfaria merged in 1974 to form the modern Baptist Church at Nixonville, which contains the first fibre-glass baptistry built in Wales.

[9] The Gordon Lennox Constitutional Club was built in 1901, by the proprietor of the Brown-Lennox Engineering Company in Pontypridd, also the President of the East Glamorgan Conservative.

Husband James Cox, who was a shift worker at a munitions factory and was asleep in the house at the time of the crash, was thrown to safety; their three boys, Donald, Thomas and Len, were out playing.

Following the 1941 air crashes, in 2007 a mural was painted by local school children and unveiled by the Canadian High Commissioner shortly afterwards on the same site,[16] while there is an ongoing campaign by the Cox family for a permanent memorial.

Project Riverside was being jointly funded by the Welsh Government and Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, who were to invest £8.2 million in the scheme.

[citation needed] Mount View, which translates from English to Welsh as Trem Y Mynydd, is a small village within Merthyr Vale, located at the bottom of Mount Pleasant The village appears in Richard Fleischer's 1971 film, a British crime drama 10 Rillington Place starring Richard Attenborough and John Hurt.

[19] The film dramatises the case of British serial killer John Christie (murderer), who committed many of his crimes in the titular Notting Hill (London) terraced house, and the miscarriage of justice involving his neighbour Timothy Evans, played by John Hurt who won a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal.

Timothy Evans[20] was a Welshman born in Merthyr Tydfil wrongfully convicted and hanged for the murder of his wife and infant daughter at their residence at 10 Rillington Place in January 1950; after new evidence emerged, he was granted a posthumous pardon.