South Wales Coalfield

The largest coal field in the UK.  2,600 square kilometeres.

Population in 1850 was only 1,000.

Population in 1924 was 167,000

First pit sunk in 1812, Walter Coffin in Dinas.

English and some Scottish Lords, example Lord Bute, developed the mine field and the railways. Lord Bute wanted coal to be easily transported to Cardiff where he owned most of the docks.

The mass influx of immigrants during this period were almost totally English and Welsh.  the most notable exception being an immigrant nationality from outside the United Kingdom, the Italians. In the late 19th century a group of Italian immigrants, originally from the northern area of Italy, centred around the town of Bardi, were forced out of London by an over-saturation of the market. These immigrants set up a network of cafés, ice cream parlours and  fish & chip shops throughout South Wales and these businesses became iconic landmarks in the villages they served and they and subsequent generations became Welsh Italians. Particular to the Rhondda, the shops ran by the Italian immigrants, were know as 'Bracchis', believed to have been named after Angelo Bracchi who opened the first café in the Rhondda in the early 1890s. By the early 21st century several of the original Bracchis were still open for business in the Rhondda.

Young Welsh Miners

As the industrialisation of the valleys began there was little shift in the use of Welsh as a first language. Initial immigrants were Welsh and it was not

until the 1900s that English workers began settling in any great numbers, but it wasn't these new workers who changed the language; the erosion of Welsh

had already begun in the 1860s in the school classrooms. The educational philosophy accepted by schoolmasters and governmental administrators was that English was the language of scholars, and that Welsh was a barrier to moral and commercial prosperity.

In 1901 35.4% of Rhondda workers spoke only English but by 1911 this had risen to 43.1%, while Welsh speaking monoglots had dropped from 11.4% to 4.4% in the same period.

The true Anglicization of the Rhondda Valleys took place from 1900 to 1950. Improved transport and communications facilitated the spread of new cultural

influences, along with dealings with outside companies with no understanding of Welsh, trade union meetings held in English, the coming of radio, cinema

and then television and cheap English newspapers and paperback books; all were factors in the absorption of the English language.

Though the population of the Rhondda was embracing English as its first language,

Frank and Aldo Berni, brothers started the chain Berni inn in Merthyr Tydfil during the 1940s a literary and intellectual movement formed in the Rhondda

that would produce an influential group of Welsh language writers. Formed during the Second World War by Egyptologist J. Gwyn Griffiths and his German wife Käte Bosse-Griffiths, the group was known as the Cadwgan Circle (Cylch Cadwgan), and met at the Griffiths' house in Pentre. The Welsh writers who made up the movement included

Pennar Davies,

Rhydwen Williams ,

James Kitchener Davies

 and

Gareth Alban Davies.

Miners strike of the 1984 – 5 strongest in south Wales. 96% support through the strike and still 93% at end in 1985