Editing Tredegar (section)

=== Industrialisation ===
Tredegar became industrialised because the local availability of easily accessible iron ore and the three natural resources which enabled iron production: 
* wood, which was used to produce charcoal as a fuel
* coal, which was used to produce coke as a fuel
* water, from the fast-flowing [[Sirhowy River]], which could be used for scouring (separating the topsoil from the underlying iron ore).

There is disagreement about the date when the first furnace was built locally. In his 1903 ''History of the iron, steel, tinplate and ... other trades of Wales'', Charles Wilkins described a charcoal-fired furnace, Pont Gwaith yr Haiarn [alternatively 'Hearn'] ('the bridge iron works'), four miles south of Tredegar, as 'one of the oldest places on the hills for ironmaking.'<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wilkins |first1=Charles |title=The history of the iron, steel, tinplate, and .... other trades of Wales |date=1903 |publisher=Joseph Williams |location=Merthyr Tydfil |page=25 |isbn=9781108026932 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=erQgxZfov-IC}}</ref> He cited in support of his description the Rev. R. Ellis ('Cynddelw'), who had claimed, 'many years ago', that old inhabitants 'fixed the earliest date of working there as at the close of seventeenth century, probably about 1690.' (ibid.)

In contrast, local author David Morris ('Eiddil Gwent')<ref>{{cite web | url=https://biography.wales/article/s-MORR-DAV-1798 | title=MORRIS, DAVID (Eiddil Gwent; c. 1798 - 1878), author &#124; Dictionary of Welsh Biography }}</ref> related in his ''Hanes Tredegar''<ref>{{cite book |last1=Morris |first1=David |title=Hanes Tredegar |date=1868 |publisher=J. Thomas |location=Tredegar |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LXcHAAAAQAAJ}}</ref> his conversation with an old lady, 'Mrs Thomas', who told him that her father and husband's relations had worked in the furnace at Pont Gwaith yr Hearn, next to the Sirhowy River, four miles south of Tredegar. The furnace was developed by two [[Bretons]] and worked by men from [[Penydarren]], [[Merthyr Tydfil]]. Morris concluded that they had built the furnace 'about the year 1738 or 1739.'<ref>{{cite book |last1=Morris |first1=Davies |author-mask=—— |title=Hanes Tredegar |date=1868 |publisher=J. Thomas |location=Tredegar |page=23 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LXcHAAAAQAAJ}}</ref>

Local historian Oliver Jones cast doubt on the claim of David Morris in his 1969 book ''The early days of Sirhowy and Tredegar''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Oliver |title=The early days of Sirhowy and Tredegar |date=1969 |publisher=Starling Press |location=Risca}}</ref> He commented that "when the Bretons arrived in 1738 they simply took over a works which had been in existence for many years."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Oliver |author-mask=—— |title=The early days of Sirhowy and Tredegar |date=1969 |publisher=Starling Press |location=Risca |page=26}}</ref>

There is also disagreement about the next furnace that was built locally, the coal-fired Sirhowy Furnace. Evan Powell claimed in his 1884 ''History of Tredegar'' that it was erected 'a few years' after the closure of the Pont Gwaith yr Hearn furnace, by a Mr Kettle of [[Shropshire]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Powell |first1=Evan |title=History of Tredegar |date=1884 |publisher=Blaenau Gwent Heritage Forum |location=Tredegar |page= 19}}</ref> Oliver Jones also cast doubt on this claim. He commented: 'neither maps nor documents support [Powell] .... Nor does Kettle, the name of the man who is supposed to have built it at that time, appear anywhere in the records.'<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Oliver |author-mask=—— |title=The early days of Sirhowy and Tredegar |date=1969 |publisher=Starling Press |location=Risca |page=29}}</ref>

However, there is agreement that a furnace was built 'near the confluence of Nant Melin brook and the river Sirhowy at the place then called Aber-Sirhowy'<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Oliver |author-mask=—— |title=The early days of Sirhowy and Tredegar |date=1969 |publisher=Starling Press |location=Risca |page=30}}</ref> in 1778, by manual workers who were hired by a consortium of four men: Thomas Atkinson, a merchant from York, and three businessmen from London, William Barrow, Bolton Hudson and John Sealy, who were 'involved in the tea and grocery trade'.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=Thomas Eric |title=The ironmasters, ironworks and people of the North West Monmouthshire area, 1780- 1850.. thesis. |date=2008 |publisher=Swansea University |location=Swansea |page=27 |url=http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42759}}</ref> The consortium secured a forty-year lease on local lands from Charles Henry Burgh, who had inherited the estate of his father, the Rev. Henry Burgh.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bradney |first1=Sir Joseph Alfred |editor1-last=Gray |editor1-first=Madeleine |title=A history of Monmouthshire Volume 5 The Hundred of Newport |date=1993 |publisher=South Wales Record Society |location=Cardiff |isbn=0-950867-67-5 |page=134}}</ref> It employed miners who drove coal levels into the hillsides at Bryn Bach and Nantybwch, the first small-scale coal mining operation in the area, for the coal-fired furnace. (Oliver Jones documented that, from the mid-1780s, 'coal mining became more systematic and much better organised'.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Oliver |title=The early days of Sirhowy and Tredegar |date=1969 |publisher=Starling Press |location=Risca |page=31}}</ref>) Other trades that the consortium employed included furnacemen, furnace helpers, smiths, cokers, masons and mule drivers.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Oliver |author-mask=—— |title=The early days of Sirhowy and Tredegar |date=1969 |publisher=Starling Press |location=Risca |page=31}}</ref>