Welsh Journals

Elerch or Eleirch was an alternative name for the river Rhymni itself and, far worse, because the form eleirch can also exist as a variant form of elyrch, which is the plural of the common noun alarch 'swan', that the meaning of the name Rhymni was 'the river of swans', with all the romantic accretions which such an interpretation could, and did engender.20 At the northern end of the valley the town of Rhymni (Rhymney) also took upon itself, indirectly, the name of the river. The town grew as the result of the establishment and development of ironworks in its vicinity before the dawning of the age of coal, the Old Furnace near Blaenrhymni first in 1801, then the Union works lower down on the Monmouthshire bank by 1803 and opposite, on the Glamorgan side of the river, the Bute works in 1835. By 1836 the latter two had united under the name of The Rhymney Ironworks Company. Dr Sian Rhiannon Williams, in her discussion of the social aspects of the history of the Welsh language in Gwent, points out that in some areas it was the name of the ironworks which became the name of the working community that served it21 (in much the same way as other communities took the name of nonconformist chapels or public houses central to them). Her most striking example is Tredegar, located on the other side of Bryn-oer from the Eisteddfod site, where Tredegar Iron Works first served as the postal address not only of the works but also of the surrounding community. It is entirely probable, though not possible to prove conclusively, that the same principle operated in the acquisition of the name Rhymni by the community which sustained the ironworks of the Rhymney Company. It was not the location of the Rhymney Ironworks as such on both sides of the river that was necessarily the critical factor but the existence of the community which was tied to the works and closely identified with it, whatever its name may have been. That urban community was not named Bryn-oer or Twyn Carno or Maerdy, to name only three locations as possibilities, but Rhymni, and it had become established as an ecclesiastical parish, part of Bedwellty, by 1843. It may be as well to add here as a rider that the Tredegar Iron Works had been so called because Samuel Homfray and his partners took a lease on land at the top of the Sirhywi valley on which to open their ironworks in 1800 and which formed a portion of the estate of the influential Morgan family of Tredegar House near Newport. The name Tredegar resembles Tredelerch in its composition in that it also is compounded of W tref + another old Welsh personal-name Tegyr (Brit. *Teco-rix)22> Tre(f)degyr originally (Tredegyr 1550, Tredeger 1551, Tredegar 1632 etc.) and is not a syncopated form of Tre(f)-deg-erw (deg 'ten', erw 'acre') i.e. 'the ten-acre homestead' as is so often suggested23 The aim of the place-name investigator is not necessarily the discovery of original meanings to the exclusion of all else. That may well be the main intention