Nantyglo Round Towers are located at
Roundhouse Farm,
Nantyglo
Nantyglo () is a village in the ancient parish of Aberystruth and county of Monmouth situated deep within the South Wales Valleys between Blaina and Brynmawr in the county borough of Blaenau Gwent.
Governance
An electoral ward in the same n ...
, near
Brynmawr in the borough of
Blaenau Gwent in the
South Wales Valleys. The two fortified towers were constructed in the early 19th century as places of retreat by the ironmaster
Joseph Bailey, after a riot was caused by his brother's threat to cut wages. They are believed to some of the last privately built defensive fortifications in Britain. One of the towers remains intact today whilst the other is in ruins having been partly demolished to salvage scrap iron in the 1940s.
History
Bailey built the towers after 1816 when some of his workers rioted when his brother,
Crawshay Bailey
Crawshay Bailey (1789 – 9 January 1872) was an English industrialist who became one of the great iron-masters of Wales.
Early life
Bailey was born in 1789 in Great Wenham, Suffolk, the son of John Bailey, of Wakefield and his wife Susannah ...
, threatened to cut their wages. Wanting a defensible retreat in case it happened again,
[ Joseph built them at the north-east and south-west corners of a sandstone wall that surrounds Roundhouse Farm, near his mansion Nantyglo House or ''Ty Mawr''. All of the fittings of the towers were made from cast iron and were one of the earliest surviving uses of structural cast iron in Britain. The south-west tower was originally one storey higher than the two-storey north-east tower and served as a residence until the 1930s.]
Description
The ground floor of the south-west tower is mostly intact, but the walls of the first storey are substantially ruined and the entire second storey is missing as are the cast iron roof, roof trusses and floor joists. These latter have been cut where they join the outer wall. The floors are missing in the north-east tower, but their joists remain and are substantially intact. The roof is intact with its wedge-shaped iron plates. One roof truss had sheared by 2003, but was being supported by interior scaffolding.[
Neither is open to the public though they can be viewed from nearby.][
]
References
{{coord, 51.78525, N, 3.17546, W, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title
External links
(reconstruction) Ty Mawr, towers and quarters, miners' houses above right hand tower with cloud issuing
Towers completed in 1816
Buildings and structures in Blaenau Gwent
1816 establishments in the United Kingdom
Tower houses in the United Kingdom