Abercarn, United Kingdom

Newman (2000) observed: 'Ironworking began here early, before the end of the c16; coalmining started c.1836. Welsh historian John Lloyd (1906) documented that in 1783 Joshua Glover and Samuel Glover (his son) of Birmingham, Warwick were operating 'on, or immediately adjacent to, the Ebbw main stream at Abercarne ... an important business'. The 'important business' was iron production. Newman (2000) observed that 'at Abercarn ... a tall, charcoal-fuelled blast furnace with charging-house survives. It is datable to the mid c18, and is thus the earliest well-preserved furnace in South Wales.' Newman documented, under the heading Blast Furnace: '½m. E, on the N slope of the Nant Gwyddon. The remains of a mid-c18 ironworking furnace, the earliest to survive fairly intact in the South Wales Coalfield.' Newman continued: 'Visible features are: one of the cast-iron beams supporting the top of the casting-arch; a low wall round the top of the furnace, from which an infilled arch spans to what remains of the charging-house, with a truncated masonry bridge-house. To the S is a feature which may be the top of either a broad charging-bank arch or a vaulted water-powered bellows chamber. Upstream 100 yards (100 metres) to the E is a fairly large pool impounded by a low masonry dam with stepped discharge weir. The original dam presumably powered a water wheel at the furnace, driving large bellows to provide the necessary draught.'

In 1783 Glover and his son also signed a contract with Anthony Bacon, Senior, of Cyfarthfa Ironworks to supply Abercarne Iron Works with 800 tons of pig iron a year. By 1808 only one of the Glovers survived, who Lloyd (1906) described as 'presumably the last surviving mamber of the firm'. Also, ironmaster Richard Crawshay, who had taken over the Cyfarthfa Ironworks after the death of Bacon in 1786, bought the freehold of the Abercarn estate from him. When the sale was completed, Crawshay immediately gave it to his son-in-law, Benjamin Hall, where he and his wife, Charlotte, Crawshay's second daughter, and their eldest son, five-year-old Benjamin came to live. The estate included two properties which were close to the river, a manor-house beside it and a small Georgian house on the wooded hill above it.

See Abercarn colliery disaster. Newman (2000) observed that coalmining started at Abercarn: 'c.1836.' Further, 'Industry flourished from 1845, when Ebenezer Rogers opened the Abercarn and Gwyddon Collieries' and in 1862, when 'Abercarn's major colliery, the Prince of Wales was sunk in the valley bottom.'

On 11 September 1878, an underground explosion in Abercarn Colliery killed 268 coal miners.