Local people making their corner of rural Britain unique
This week
SaturdayÌý8th September 2007
Richard Uridge visits Blaenavon in South Wales, the cradle of the industrial revolution, to find out how coal mining and iron production affected the landscape.
Richard visitsÌý in the South Wales valleys this week, an area transformed by coal mining and iron production at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. When closed, the population wasÌýlargely unemployed and the landscape was left pitted by slag heaps and scarred by open cast mining. Richard goes down Big Pit and talks to Bill Morgan, who's 98 and remembers working underground when he was a young man. Mary Williams has lived in the same street in Blaenavon for 72 years; she says the community was devastated when the mining stopped in 1980 and it still hasn't recovered. But Richard also discovers the area is a because of its influence on modern society. Standing at , overlooking the Black Mountains, he realises the history of theÌýhills and valleysÌýis both beautiful and brutal - a past which has left the marks of a complex mix of agricultural and industrial life.
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