Taff Vale Viaduct – Quakers Yard Continued
The haulier and another person were hurt very much, and others escaped
slightly bruised”. As a consequence of this accident the Dowlais Works were
forced to send its iron to the wharf at Merthyr for loading onto boats
there. From the bridge, the course of the tramroad is followed south towards
Quakers’ Yard where the Taff is fed from the east by the Bargoed-Taff , a
tributary which has its source in the moorland area south of Dowlais.
Before its association with the Quaker faith this ancient
crossing was called Rhyd y grug meaning the ‘Ford of the
Rustling Waters’. On the banks of the Taff-Bargoed, several
hundred yards upstream from its confluence with the Taff
stood Melin Caiach, a corn mill and woollen factory. This
little complex would have been a focal point for the early
farming community where wheat and barley would have been
ground and woollen cloth manufactured.
The mills survived until the latter part of the nineteenth
century, when the sinking of Harris’ Navigation Pits
radically changed the whole neighbourhood. The early history
of the Quaker faith locally is somewhat obscure but it seems
that the group leased a small area of ground to be used for
burial purposes from Pantanas Farm in the 1660’s. One source
states that William Howe, a Bristol Quaker, opened the
graveyard in June 1665, although a cast iron plaque affixed
to the wall of the ground gave 1667.
These people were probably a breakaway group of
Nonconformists, some of whom had worshipped at Blaencanaid
and Berthlwyd Farms. George Fox, a noted Quaker visited the
area in 1666 and returned a year later in the company of
William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. The last known
meeting was held here in June 1797 but this was
unfortunately severely disrupted by a crowd of ‘irreligious
people who frequented the place breaking the Sabbath and
drinking’.
South from here the tramroad, after a brief stay on the
western bank of the Taff, crosses the river by a bridge of
similar pedigree to the one already mentioned but later
acquiring the name of Victoria. Now, on the final part of
its route to the Basin at Navigation, the tramroad is
confined by the steep valley sides, which force it in places
perilously close to the waters of the river.
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