Ebbw Vale - Present

Present

Today there are no steelworks or mines left in or around the town, though Ebbw Vale is still recognised for its innovation and contribution to the development of Britain as an industrial nation. This includes the world's first steel rail, rolled at Ebbw Vale in 1857, and the rails for the Stockton and Darlington Railway were also manufactured at Ebbw Vale.

Unemployment in Ebbw Vale is among the highest rates in the United Kingdom, largely the result of the decline of the mining and steel industries.

In 2003 work began on demolishing the long-standing steelworks, and currently around one to two miles of the valley stands empty awaiting development.

Ebbw Vale hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1958 and again in 2010 . The Welsh language was dominant in the area until the last quarter of the 19th century and remnants of the language (Welsh hymns and pockets of Welsh being spoken in nearby Rhymney) persisted into the 1970s. The National Eisteddfod returned to Ebbw Vale in 2010.

Aneurin Bevan, the "father" of the National Health Service, represented Ebbw Vale as a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) in Parliament from the 1929 general election. When he died in 1960, he was succeeded as MP by Michael Foot. The seat is now called Blaenau Gwent.

The Ebbw Vale conurbation today is a product of areas which grew during the Industrial Revolution in the South Wales coalfield and the South Wales Valleys as a result of the iron industry, local ironworks or have developed as a result of distinct housing areas to serve local industry with workers, they include: Ebbw Vale, Rassau, Garnlydan, Hill Top, Briery Hill, Glyncoed, Willowtown, Glanyrafon, Cwm, Newtown, Victoria, Tyllwyn, Waunlwyd and Ebbw Vale itself. In particular Beaufort and Victoria were the two original iron producing areas.

Read more about this topic:  Ebbw Vale

Famous quotes containing the word present:

    When we leave our child in nursery school for the first time, it won’t be just our child’s feelings about separation that we will have to cope with, but our own feelings as well—from our present and from our past, parents are extra vulnerable to new tremors from old earthquakes.
    Fred Rogers (20th century)

    Time present and time past
    Are both perhaps present in time future,
    And time future contained in time past.
    If all time is eternally present
    All time is unredeemable.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    In the moment when you make the least petition to God, though it be but a silent wish that he may approve you, or add one moment to your life,—do you not, in the very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your thought? In that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more present to your mind than your brother or your child.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)