Industrial Heritage - Mosaic - Ystalyfera, Powys, Wales.
N 51° 45.995 W 003° 46.898
30U E 446062 N 5735366
Ystalyfera's Industrial Past - A large ceramic mosaic mural over 60 feet long. Featuring images of the industrial heritage of Ystalyfera, a small village, in the picturesque, upper Swansea Valley, South Wales.
Waymark Code: WMW9HZ
Location: South Wales, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 07/29/2017
Views: 0
Historic Industrial Mosaic - Displayed on a retaining wall, at a fork in the road, opposite St. David's Church, Ystalyfera
The mosaic mural, features the images of the areas past industrial heritage, including Coal Mining, Iron & Steel manufacturing.
All using water to power the factories & the canals to move their goods & raw materials, through Ystalyfera, & down the Valley to & from the Port of Swansea.
From left to right the Mosaic shows a few houses, two factory workers, in front of an abstract factory & chimney, leading to machinery, & two large flywheels, fronted by a steam engine. At the center of the Mosaic a canal barge, is displayed, a man with his horse that would have been used to pull the boats & barges along the tow path. followed by a large water wheel. The mosaic mural finishes with Afon Twrch Aqueduct & Weir.
"Ystalyfera grew as a village with the advent of coal mining and iron working, which were a huge part of everyday life in the local communities of the Swansea Valley (Welsh: Cwmtawe).
In 1838 a furnace was built by James Palmer Budd at Ystalyfera and from this grew the iron and tinplate works which by 1863 was described as 'the largest tinplate manufactory in the world'. A new cold-blast process was successfully introduced here and, despite some early crises, the works prospered. By the mid-1850s there were forty furnaces for puddling and balling in operation and sixteen tin mills and houses. The output of iron increased from the 4,893 tons of 1843 to 29,828 tons in 1858. The works continued to grow during the 1860s and reached peak production in 1872 with the sale of 182,000 boxes of tinplate." Text Source: (
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