Rhymney Cemetery

The countryside around present day Rhymney would have been very different in the early 17th century. In 1624 the parish of Bedwellty was created which covered the lower division of the Wentloog Hundred, in the county of Monmouth, a hilly district between the River Rhymney on the west and the Sirhowy River on the east. The upper Sirhowy Valley at this time would have been a natural well-wooded valley, consisting of a few farms and the occasional small ironworks where iron ore and coal had occurred together naturally. Later it would have contained the chapelries of Rhymney and Tredegar, the latter being known as a market town. Industrialisation began in the 1750s with the establishment of the…

In 1906 John Edward Lloyd, the Welsh historian, documented that in 1800 David Evans, Thomas Williams, John Ambrose and Richard Cunningham entered into an agreement to build a furnace and to carry on an iron works and a cast iron trade on a plot of land ownned by the Duke of Beaufort and Mr Glover. The name of the firm was The Union Iron Company. The works started production in 1801. Two years later negotiations were conducted by Benjamnin Hall and a partnership was formed between Richard Crawshay, Watkin George, Benjamin Hall, Richard Cunningham and Thomas Williams to form The Union Iron Works Company. After documenting the arrangements of the partnership, Lloyd (1906) then documented:…