Qualla: Glamorganshire Canal

Glamorganshire Canal: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MichiganCharms, CC BY-SA 3.0. There was once a canal that ran from the head of the Taff Valley down to the sea at Cardiff, twenty-five miles long, dropping five hundred and forty-two feet through fifty locks. It was built because the ironmasters of Merthyr Tydfil wanted to move their pig iron and cannon to the ocean without paying for horse trains. It was destroyed because the railways came, then the trains stopped using it, then the canal-side villages started slumping into the workings beneath them, and then nobody was watching. Today it is mostly a footpath. The Taff Trail between Abercynon and Merthyr Tydfil walks the line of the old towpath, and you can still find the lock walls in the bushes, and the occasional bridge, and a few stretches of standing water that have become a nature reserve.

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Image: MichiganCharms | CC BY-SA 3.0

Glamorganshire Canal: The Idea

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Author=George Tod, CC BY-SA 2.0. Construction began in 1790. The ironmasters of Merthyr Tydfil, Richard Crawshay of Cyfarthfa chief among them, were tired of horse-drawn wagons hauling their finished iron over poor roads to the docks at Cardiff. A canal could carry far more for less. With backing from Lord Cardi...

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Image: Author=George Tod | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glamorganshire Canal: Fifty Locks Down the Taff

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was StephenDawson at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 2.0. The canal clung to the western slope of the Taff Valley most of the way down, crossing the river on an aqueduct at Navigation, now called Abercynon, to ride the eastern slope into Cardiff. The fifty locks were necessary because the Taff drops sharply through the valley, more than...

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Image: The original uploader was StephenDawson at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glamorganshire Canal: A Hundred Years of Iron and Coal

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0. For roughly seven decades the canal worked beautifully. Dividends were capped by Parliament at eight per cent, and in the prosperous years between 1804 and 1828 the profits were so high that the company refunded tolls to traders or charged nothing at all. Then in 1841 the Taff Va...

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Image: CC BY-SA 2.0

Glamorganshire Canal: The Subsidence at Aberfan

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Ridley, Public domain. By the 1890s, six railway companies were running into Merthyr. The canal could not compete. Worse, the four-mile pound at Aberfan, the long lock-free section through the village that would become tragically famous seventy years later, was subsiding into the coal workings beneath ...

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Image: Martin Ridley | Public domain

Glamorganshire Canal: Walking the Line Today

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Much of the Taff Trail follows the old canal between Abercynon and Merthyr Tydfil. The towpath has become a cycling and walking route, with the old locks visible as lines of dressed stone among the trees and the route of the canal traced as a green ribbon down the valley. The sec...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0