Morganstown - History - Development From The 18th Century

Development From The 18th Century

Built in 1749, the Melingriffith Tinplate Works just across the River Taff from Radyr was built on or near the site of an old corn mill that had operated as far back as the late 12th century. Melingriffith was the largest working tin factory in the UK, until the much later construction of the Treforest Tin Works. People in Radyr would set their watches by the sound of the works hooters, which were also sounded to see in the new year. The tinplate works became the major employer for workers from Radyr and would remain so for nearly two hundred years.

The tin mills were powered exclusively by water drawn from the River Taff down the Melingriffith feeder stream, a water course that doubled as a canal that carried raw iron ore from the Pentyrch Iron Works until around 1815, when the Pentyrch tramroad was completed. The tramroad crossed the River Taff over the Iron Bridge. The feeder’s lock was permanently closed in 1871 when it was bridged over, but traces of it still remain.

The tin works closed in 1957, and today the only signs that the works ever existed at all are the mostly dry bed of the original Melingriffith feeder stream that still runs down from the River Taff from just above the Radyr weir, and the recently restored water pump standing opposite Oak Cottage. The works site itself has been completely cleared, and is now a modern housing estate.

The Melingriffith feeder stream made its way to the original Glamorganshire Canal, where they ran in parallel through the Tin Works and out the other side at Melingriffith Lock. Where they had come together north of the Tin Works, any overflow from the Canal was originally designed to empty into the feeder. This point is now at the southern end of the Glamorganshire Canal Local Nature Reserve and all the water from the canal runs into the feeder before disappearing into a piped water course that passes under the modern housing estate.

At the southern end of the housing estate, the feeder re-emerges at the point where the Melingriffith water pump stands, the pump originally designed to lift water from the bottom of the feeder back into the Canal at Melingriffith Lock. Today, the Glamorganshire Canal has been almost totally overbuilt. Ty Mawr Road has replaced the route of the canal from Melingriffith all the way to Whitchurch.

Samuel Lewis says in his 1849 "Topographical Dictionary of Wales" says of Radyr:

"A parish, in the poorlaw union of Cardiff, hundred of Kibbor, county of Glamorgan, in South Wales, 3½ miles (N. W. by W.) from Cardiff; containing 279 inhabitants. This parish probably derives its name, signifying "a cataract," from the rushing waters of the river Tâf, by which it is bounded on the north-east. It was formerly comprehended within the hundred of Miskin, but has been recently separated therefrom. It comprises about eleven hundred acres of arable and pasture land, inclosed and in a profitable state of cultivation: the surface is in some parts elevated, and in others flat, but no where subject to inundation; the soil is a strong brown earth, favourable to the production of good crops of grain of all kinds, potatoes, and hay. The substratum is partly a hard brown stone, and partly limestone of very good quality. Radyr Court, formerly the seat of the family of Matthew, ancestors of the late Lord Llandaf, has been partially taken down, and the remainder has been modernised, and converted into a farmhouse. The turnpike-road leading from Cardiff to Llantrissent passes a little to the south of the parish; and the Tâf-Vale railway runs through it, nearly parallel with the river, which is crossed by the line in this vicinity. Some of the inhabitants are employed at the iron-works in the parish of Pentyrch.

The living is a vicarage, endowed with £200 royal bounty; patron and impropriator, the representative of the late Earl of Plymouth, who is lord of the manor: the tithes have been commuted for £113. 9s. 0d, of which a sum of £38. 9s. 0d is payable to the impropriator, and a sum of £75 to the vicar. The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, is a neat plain edifice, with a curious turret at the west end. There is a place of worship for Calvinistic Methodists; a Sunday school for gratuitous instruction is held in it, and another at Radyr Court. In the parish is a spring of very cold water, called Y Pistyll Goleu, "the bright water-spout," issuing from the side of a hill, under a considerable depth of earth over a limestone rock: it has by some writers been termed mineral, but it is not known to possess any other properties than that of its extreme coldness, which renders it efficacious in curing sprains and weakness of the sinews."

Until the mid 19th century Radyr was a collection of small farms, crofts and cottages, but after Radyr railway station opened in 1863, the population increased from 400 to over 600 residents over a twenty-year period. The Taff Vale Railway and its successor the Great Western Railway brought significant employment to Radyr and when Junction Terrace (the first 'street' in Radyr) was built to house the railway workers it was the start of a steep demand for housing in Radyr that transformed the peaceful hamlet and continues to do so today. The 1901 construction of the Barry Railway's Walnut Tree Viaduct dominated the village for some 70 years.