Qualla: Clydach Gorge

Clydach Gorge: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeremy Bolwell, CC BY-SA 2.0. Smart's Bridge, a cast iron span over the River Clydach, has the year 1824 cast directly into its iron. It is one of the oldest cast iron bridges anywhere in the world, and it is still here, still bridging, still doing its job. That detail tells you something important about the Clydach Gorge. This 5.6-kilometre slice down through the eastern edge of the South Wales Coalfield was one of the first places in Britain to industrialise, and it never quite stopped being industrial, but it also never lost its trees. Iron, lime, coal, charcoal, water, railways, tramroads, turnpikes, modern dual carriageway: every layer is here, often stacked one on top of the other, all of it inside the Brecon Beacons National Park.

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Image: Jeremy Bolwell | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clydach Gorge: Geography in a Hurry

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RAY JONES, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Clydach Gorge is steep. Really steep. The A465 Heads of the Valleys road, the modern trunk road that climbs through it, holds a gradient of 1 in 20 for 4 kilometres straight, gaining 210 metres of elevation between Gilwern at the foot and Brynmawr at the head. That climb tell...

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Image: RAY JONES | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clydach Gorge: Iron in the Sixteenth Century

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RAY JONES, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Hanbury family of Pontypool, the same Hanburys who would later run the tinplate works that defined the area for centuries, built a furnace and forge in the Clydach valley as early as the 1500s. Their site has almost vanished now, leaving only fragments of a masonry dam where ...

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Image: RAY JONES | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clydach Gorge: Ribbons of Stone Track

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Davies, CC BY-SA 2.0. Long before the Clydach Ironworks needed a proper railway, it needed something. What it got was a thicket of horse-drawn tramroads that still survives in fragments along the gorge. The Clydach Railroad of 1793-94, engineered by John Dadford, linked the Wain Dew colliery at Beaufo...

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Image: Nigel Davies | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clydach Gorge: Stone for the Furnaces

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeremy Bolwell, CC BY-SA 2.0. Iron needs lime. Lime burns out the silica impurities in the smelt, and a 19th-century blast furnace consumed it by the wagonload. So the gorge also became a limeworks. Blackrock Limeworks started in 1794-95 alongside the early ironworks, quarrying along the contours above Clydac...

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Image: Jeremy Bolwell | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clydach Gorge: Roads, Rails, and a Cycleway

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeremy Bolwell, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Merthyr Tydfil to Govilon Turnpike was the gorge's first proper road, authorised by Parliament and laid through the valley in 1812-13. The Merthyr, Tredegar and Abergavenny Railway followed in 1862, requiring tunnels and a great curving viaduct across the Nant Dyar ravine. Th...

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Image: Jeremy Bolwell | CC BY-SA 2.0