Melingriffith: The early years
Sep
Previously, we looked at a row of long-demolished houses at Melingriffith called Sunnybank. This strange three-storey block had been built at the end of the eighteenth century to house workers for the expanding tinworks nearby, and was just one part of the jigsaw of what was to become the world’s largest tinplate manufacturer.
But how many of us know anything of the two-hundred-year tinplating story? And what exactly is tinplate?
I can remember, when I was younger, the huge flatbed lorries thundering along the main roads, with enormous rolls of shiny ‘tinplate’ on the back; perhaps two or three rolls strapped down on each lorry. But it seems that these rolls were tinplated steel, whereas back in the eighteenth century, we’re talking about tinplated iron.
There’s too much story to tell in one go, so let’s concentrate on the basic tale for now.
There had been a grist mill on the river at Melingriffith for the best part of a thousand years, and by the eighteenth century, after numerous re-buildings, it was probably an overshot water mill with its own leet, or feeder, with the water taken from the River Taff, further upstream at Radyr Weir. The sketch shows how the mill, with its overshot wheel, might have looked like back then.
There’s written evidence of a forge nearby. What is a forge you might ask, and why would they need one at Melingriffith?
It seems that iron-ore had been discovered at Pentyrch, and could easily be excavated and smelted using charcoal to produce iron. Serendipitously, the whole area was heavily wooded, so charcoal could easily be made for the smelting; this was long before coal was found!
The iron-ore from Pentyrch was turned into pig-iron using very rudimentary furnaces to form iron slugs known as ‘blooms’. To turn these blooms into a more usable iron, it needed to be heated in a forge and hammered to remove any air pockets and slag, using immense force.
There are reports of this iron being cast at the Pentyrch forges to manufacture cannon for many years previously. There are even reports of cannon being forged, and then smuggled to Spain in the years just before the Armada! We’re told that there was a furnace and a forge at Melingriffith too in the early 1700s, but on a much smaller scale.
It was the discovery of basic tinplating in Europe, a hundred years previously that led to manufacturing tinplate at scale. But it wasn’t until the 1740s that commercial tinplate manufacture arrived in south Wales.
Tinplate back then wasn’t formed in rolls, but in rectangular sheets, roughly A3 size. These were hammered from the iron ‘blooms’, folded, re-folded, and then sliced and shaped into thin sheets. It was this rudimentary trade that started the tinplate bonanza at Melingriffith.
For many years this process was carried out by beefy blacksmiths wielding massive hammers, re-heating the plates in their forge until they were the right size. The second sketch shows some of these beefy blacksmiths ‘hard at work’ at the forge.
Last time, we discovered that there was a forge at Melingriffith before 1750 and within ten years, Richard Jordan had acquired a long lease. This was later assigned to a group of businessmen from Bristol, and it was during this period that tinplate manufacture developed commercially at Melingriffith. As Edgar Chappell reported, these businessmen developed the works into a ‘prosperous and progressive undertaking’.
This early tinplate manufacture was revolutionised by the introduction of enormous water-driven mills thinning the plate during successive rolling and re-heating. In all probability, it was in these early years that the old mill feeder would have been enlarged and improved to provide a more substantial water supply.
Tinplating coated the flattened iron sheets with a thin coating of tin to prevent rusting; this coating needed to be washed, pickled, and packed, with numerous stages taking many hours.
The tin-ore needed for all this, had been mined in Cornwall and shipped to Neath, where it was refined. It was then delivered to the old wharf in Cardiff, before being transported to Melingriffith via teams of pack-horses or mules.
The basic iron ‘blooms’ from Pentyrch were also delivered to Melingriffith by similar trains of pack-horses. It must have been so busy. This was way before the construction of the Glamorganshire Canal and the railways that followed!
As time went by, more and more iron was needed, and much of the woodland around Whitchurch, Radyr, and Pentyrch was cut down to make charcoal.
We’re told that eventually there were twelve mills at Melingriffith, with the processes always being streamlined and improved. The early mills were given names – Princess, Volunteer, Old Forge, New Forge, Fly, and Turbine – but later mills were just referred to by numbers. I wonder whether ‘Old Forge’ was the original?
We’ve no idea of how large the workforce was in the early days, but probably no more than fifty. They probably lived – or, more likely lodged – in cottages nearby in Tongwynlais and Primrose Hill.
In the 1780s, ownership transferred again, this time to Harfoot Partridge & Co – who were Quakers. This was the time of expansion, and the building of the cottages at New Houses and Work Row, as well as Sunnybank, all of which would later become the works village of Melingriffith.
We’ll explore all this another time, and some of the folk – men, women and the children – who worked there, the ‘doublers’, the ‘behinders’ and the ‘picklers’ and learn a little of the tinplating processes involved.
Nigel Lewis is a member of AWEN@thelibrary (awen.cymru@gmail.com)
