Olive May: A Lady in Reduced Circumstances

The Edith May loading wheat for Rochford, Essex from Loch Gowan at 
the Royal Victoria Dock, January 6th, 1961. Note the position of her 
mast and derrick and her conventional cambered hatches.
Author

Hall's Tramroad

This ‘bird’s eye view’ of Abercarn is looking from much higher up the mountainside than the view on page 34 but otherwise shows a similar  part of the village. The old Lower Works was replaced by a more  modern complex in or about 1910, so the photograph was taken some time just prior to that, probably around 1908-9.

The left-hand group  of buildings certainly look derelict and roofless. The branch  tramroad serving the Acid Works ran up the street just behind the  coal wagons and in front of the shops, crossing the canal in the  centre, just to the right of the top of the chimney stack and then  running on on the lower slopes of the hillside in the background. 

Hall paid the Monmouthshire Canal Co. 6d per annum wayleave for his  tramroad to cross the bridge over the canal along this line. The Acid  Works itself lay a little further up the valley, to the right. In the  right middle distance can be seen the stack and headgear of Abercarn  No. 1 Pit, also sometimes called Quarry Pit.

The mounds to the right  of the picture appear to be the waste from this mine, which have been  carried across the canal bridge visible just the other side of them  and dumped on part of the old Lower Works site. The old route of the  tramroad to the canal basin would have been buried beneath the spoil heaps.

The furnace, through which the line was said by John Llewellin  to have been lowered to pass through, would have been to the left of  and slightly nearer the village than the larger of the two stacks,  almost in line with Bridge Street (see Tithe Map).
Robin Williams  collection