Qualla: The South Wales Valleys

The South Wales Valleys: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Hughes, CC BY-SA 2.0. From the air, the South Wales Valleys read like fingers laid down on a map. They run roughly north to south, parallel to each other, each one its own narrow world. From the coastline at Cardiff, Newport and Swansea, they climb into the hills, every valley a separate community connected by roads to the towns above and below, but separated from its neighbours by ridges. They are the towns where the British Empire was fuelled. They are also home to the highest proportion of Welsh-identifying population anywhere in Wales. To understand the Valleys you have to know that the topography wrote everything else: industry, language, politics, even how rugby was played.

Read more: The South Wales Valleys on Qualla

Image: Alan Hughes | CC BY-SA 2.0

The South Wales Valleys: Two Waves of Industry

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MortimerCat, CC BY 2.5. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Valleys held very few people. Fewer than a thousand lived in the Rhondda in 1851. Then two waves of industry crashed through. The first wave was iron, which began in the late eighteenth century along the northern edge of the coalfield: Merthy...

Read more: The South Wales Valleys on Qualla

Image: MortimerCat | CC BY 2.5

The South Wales Valleys: Aberfan and What Followed

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit G.Evans91, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the middle of the twentieth century, the coalfield was in decline. Domestic coal use was falling. The Clean Air Act of 1956 changed how Britain heated its homes. Exports to Europe, once thirty-three percent of Welsh coal output, fell to about five percent by 1980. And then in ...

Read more: The South Wales Valleys on Qualla

Image: G.Evans91 | CC BY-SA 3.0

The South Wales Valleys: The Welshest Part of Wales

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JKMMX, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Valleys hold roughly thirty percent of Wales's population, and they carry an unusually high proportion of people born in Wales itself, over ninety percent in Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil. Merthyr Tydfil reported in the 2021 census the highest rate of Welsh-identifying pop...

Read more: The South Wales Valleys on Qualla

Image: JKMMX | CC BY-SA 3.0

The South Wales Valleys: Geography Wrote Culture

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Owain, CC BY-SA 3.0. The shape of the Valleys still shapes the lives lived in them. Roads run north and south along each valley, connecting the settlements that share a river. Crossing east or west to a neighbouring valley means going up over a ridge, which most people rarely do by car and almost nev...

Read more: The South Wales Valleys on Qualla

Image: Owain | CC BY-SA 3.0

The South Wales Valleys: After the Pits

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Lawson 11, CC BY-SA 4.0. The unemployment of the 1980s and 1990s is, slowly, becoming something else. Employment rates have risen in recent years, growing faster in the Valleys than anywhere else in Wales. Billions of pounds in investment have come from EU structural funds, the UK government, and the Wel...

Read more: The South Wales Valleys on Qualla

Image: Keith Lawson 11 | CC BY-SA 4.0