Welsh Journals

ancient wire-making industry which had been in an ailing state for half a century. It poses a number of questions, however, the most important of which are: When did the incident take place? Where, exactly was the rolling mill? Who purchased the locomotive, and what was it's fate? The Locomotive. The Taff Vale Railway offered for sale in Cardiff two 2-4-0 tender locomotives in February 1875. They had been built by Kitson & Co. of Leeds in 1854 and were named ELY and RHYMNEY. They were snapped up almost immediately by Edwin Foden of Sandbach, a dealer, and evidently he sold them as quickly to Murrall and Stothert, who had leased the Tintern wire-works in 1866.5 It thus appears most likely that the transport of the locomotive (note the singular) to Tintern took place in or about March 1875, and in that same month Murralls were offering one of the locomotives for sale. There was no railway nearer Tintern than Chepstow at this time, for the Wye Valley Railway was not opened until November 1876. Murralls, it may be assumed, could afford no delay, with a precarious business dependent upon a rolling mill subject to the whims of the river. Yet that same river ran right past their door, hence the choice of the schooner. The Rolling Mill. The wire-works and forges were owned by the Duke of Beaufort but were leased to operators. When a new lease was offered, a plan of the works was made, and a schedule of all the equipment in each of the premises was drawn up. This was done in 1821, 1866 and 1878.6 These schedules listed the various works consecutively down the Anghidy from Pont-y-Saeson to Tintern. The plans do not name the various works, so without the order of the schedules their identification would be haphazard to say the least. The first two schedules make no mention of a rolling mill near the Wye, so when Murralls took up the lease in 1866 the last works was Abbey Forge, situated against the dam wall of the Forge Pond. The plans of 1821 and 1866 do show one more building between Abbey Forge and the river, a long narrow structure on the north side of the dock, presumably the "coal house and foundry walls and roof. which is the final entry in the description of Abbey Forge; this was no rolling mill, for it could hardly have escaped the detailed description given for all the other works along the Anghidy. By 1878, however, soon after Murralls had departed, the inventory records dramatic changes, which were clearly Murralls' work. A new and major establishment had appeared, named New Forge, last in the down-valley sequence, that is even nearer the Wye than Abbey Forge. New Forge was equipped with two puddling furnaces, a forge hammer, billet rolls, bar rolls, billet shears, a smith's shed and forge. No water-wheel or other power