In 1778 an iron furnace was built in the upper Sirhowy Valley by Thomas Atkinson and William Barrow, who came to the area from London.
In 1797, Samuel Homfray, with partners Richard Fothergill and the Matthew Monkhouse built a new furnace which they called the Sirhowy Ironworks, leasing the land in Bedwellty, Newport from the Tredegar Estate.
When John Gooch John Gooch, a manager of an iron foundry in Bedlington, Northumberland, took a managerial post in the Tredegar ironworks in 1831: 'Tredegar was a strange place to go, voluntarily .... Utterly remote at the head of the Sirhowy valley in Monmouthshire, the town was a man-made hell.
Men and children worked killing hours in the smoke and filth of the foundries and were maimed by molten metal.
[6] During the 1910's and 1920's Aneurin Bevan worked for the Company at the Ty-Trist Colliery, Bedwellty pit and from where he was fired for being a union leader.
The poor conditions in the pits and collieries of the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company motivated Bevan to create the National Health Service.