Cefn Mawr - A fascinating post-industrial Landscape.

A ruined farm near one of the coal pits at "The Ballast"

The excellent booklet, produced by a local community initiative*, goes a very long way to redress the balance. It describes a series of walks not far from the aqueduct with just enough industrial archaeology to enable the visitor with half an imagination to join the dots for him or herself. The Tourist Office carries a dwindling supply of these booklets about the trail, which as far as I can see, is now out of print- a huge shame.
A glance at the Ordnance survey sheet for Cefn Mawr in 1904 will show a bewildering warren of tramroads, plateways, coal mines, foundries and countless other industries, none of which are remotely evident today, save as the odd retaining wall made from furnace slag or an alignment of road or footpath. Oh, for a time machine set at 1860.

And yet, there's something intensely pleasurable in taking in the genius loci, noting with a sudden thrill that the stone wall or abutment you have been looking at is actually one of the vestigial remains of a tramroad or a lime kiln.

Armed with one of the booklets supplied by the very helpful ladies of Trevor Basin TIC, Petra and I chose route D.

Interpretative Map by CreativityJones Design

I have to say that it was an eye-opener. We walked towards the north end of the Trevor basin, (3) on the map, past the truncated arm of the canal which once served the ironworks. It was an idyllic, bosky scene, and it didn't take much imagination to picture the place as it was a hundred years ago.

Then, the atmosphere changed. A large area of waste land resembling a bomb site opened up behind tall security railings on our right. High masts supported security cameras and lights, guarding the ransacked land where stunted, blighted birches and conifers were struggling to grow.

A far view of the Monsanto site from atop the Cefn Mawr ridge. Our route took us immediately in front of the tree line in the middle distance. The Vale of Llangollen is in the far background, and the aqueduct is just out of the photo to the left distance.

This was the Plas Kynaston estate, where several important industries sprang up in the 1800's to service the construction of the aqueduct. There were brickworks, potteries, engineering works, foundries and, notably, a chemical works which eventually grew to engulf the whole estate. Robert Graesser started an oil works here in the late 1860's to extract paraffin oil and wax from mining waste, later coal tar and explosives. He became so successful that he formed a partnership with the American chemical giant Monsanto. There were changes in ownership later to Flexsys, who closed most of the site and swept away the structures (and any remaining archaeology) but it has since been impossible to develop the area because of the very heavy chemical ground pollution.

There have been several plans mooted. The Plas Kynaston Canal Group want to re-open the canal and build a marina. Others suggest capping the site with concrete and building much-needed houses. There was even a suggestion that development could be funded by extracting the vast mineral wealth that supposedly lies below the site, although I don't see a modern quarry sitting well in a world heritage zone.

Putting those questions aside, we walked on, realising that the embankment to our left was the alignment of the Pontcycyllte Tramroad, a horse-drawn operation, later converted to accommodate steam locomotives. It eventually linked with the railway line to Llangollen, and some bridge abutments could be seen just before the A539 Llangollen Road. Along here on the left was once the mighty Trefynant Fireclay Works, owned by J.C.Edwards, who once supplied glazed terracotta bricks and tiles to the world. Edwards bricks decorated the Natural History Museum in London, as well as the fireplaces on the Titanic! The still new-looking produce of the  factory can be seen all through Cefn Mawr as many houses and shops are decorated with the shiny red bricks, made from local clay and fired with local coal.

photo: Petra Brown

We had to cross the A539 Llangollen Road, noting the Trefynant Pottery manager's house, built entirely from Terracotta bricks and tiles.



Once across the road, we took a public footpath alongside a stream, where informal gardens adjoined the opposite bank, Their walls were made from an impressive jumble of different tiles and bricks, something we would become used to seeing on our walk. Tiles marked "J.C.E" lay on the ground or half-buried everywhere along the path, as it passed the disturbed ground and overgrown tips of an old colliery, masked by woodland.

A tunnel was reached, under the disused Ruabon to Barmouth railway, closed in 1965. This is known locally as the "Darkie", as is the tunnel on the south end of the Pontcysyllte aqueduct.



Once out of the tunnel, we encountered an old ruined building, half constructed in Sandstone and half in JCE bricks. Many structures in Cefn Mawr bear the marks of later alterations with local bricks like this. According to the booklet, this was a place known as the "Ballast", an open area pock-marked with vestiges of old pits, shafts and tips. We emerged into a beautiful meadow with many different species of wild flowers which Petra took delight in identifying. Some Vanner ponies were watching us from the top of a low spoil tip, but they must have known that we didn't have any sugar cubes or carrots, as to my disappointment,  they kept their distance.

We carried on and emerged, via some giant Lego bricks, into Bowers Road.


Bryn Terrace, seen in the above photo, was built in 1906 from...J.C. Edwards terracotta bricks. Bowers road was rather interesting in that we encountered some bridge abutments that looked to date from the mid-C19th. Later, when browsing early maps of the site, I discovered a reference to the road on an 1880 edition that had a tramroad from the Acre House colliery over the road to a tipping ground on the "Ballast". This area of Cefn Mawr is Acrefair and I wondered if the name came from Acre House farm nearby.


The Bowers Road tramway bridge abutments. Above the wall is a new road which, looking at Google Earth, obviously takes the line of the tramway formation. We carried on, following the booklet's map and found ourselves at the A539 again. There was once a large railway bridge at the junction, supporting the Ruabon to Llangollen Railway's line. This was removed in the 1960's. The nature of development here felt quite English; the houses for the most part made from local glazed brick with tile embellishments.