In a matter of days, in an online auction run from Kent, the destiny of one of the most historic buildings in Wales will be decided.
If you browse the listing on the auctioneers’ website, however, you’d have little idea of the pivotal significance of The Rhondda Powerhouse.
There is no mention that this “former brick-built Welsh Colliery building in a derelict condition” was the “citadel” at the heart of the Tonypandy Riots – the seismic industrial battle etched on the Cymric psyche which infuriated Churchill and gave us the legacy of the national minimum wage.
Nor is there any indication that the Powerhouse – guide price £55,000 – is Grade II listed. But then, attention to detail doesn’t appear a particular strong point from those administering the sale of this piece of Welsh history. It’s listed as the “Rhonda” Powerhouse on “Llwynypria” Road in Mid Glamorgan.
Read more: The Rhondda Powerhouse once earmarked for a community revamp is now up for sale
It is, of course, in Llwynypia, right on the border with Tonypandy – I’m a Llwynypia native, these distinctions are important. I’ve watched the Powerhouse crumble away bit by bit all my life. Built in 1905, it looks like a giant chapel with much of its distinctive bow-trussed ceiling now open to the heavens. Both nature and vandals have left their mark, vegetation sprouting through its exterior and graffiti scarring its interior.
Two appropriate monuments witness its decline. Across the road, back-lit by Asda and McDonald’s, the bronze miner, his wife, and their shawl-cradled baby watch over the Powerhouse. From the hillside opposite the figure of coal-owner Archibald Hood points towards it.
Hood was the benevolent Scot who established the Glamorgan Coal Company, sinking the pits the Powerhouse would serve and ensuring his miners had houses with gardens, an education system for their children and a library and swimming baths for recreation. Llwynypia Colliery is still referred to as “Scotch Colliery” to this day.
My grandfather and great-grandfather both worked there – the latter operating the pump in the Powerhouse itself. It supplied the power and ventilation for five pits and with such a vital role it’s not surprising it became the focus of the power struggle at the heart of the Tonypandy Riots.
My own knowledge of the Rhondda’s most compelling historical event came from the first-hand accounts of my grandmother. As the youngest child of her youngest child – her 12th – I had the oldest Nan of anyone I knew and thus a direct hotline into history.
She could remember Queen Victoria’s funeral, music hall and mutton-leg sleeves and couldn’t utter Winston Churchill’s name without an expression of complete distaste. To her, he wasn’t the wartime leader – he was just the man who “Sent The Troops In”. And in this brutal battle between miners, their employers and the entire British establishment, the Powerhouse was the fortress that had to be defended or conquered, depending which side you were on.
The basic narrative of the dispute began on August 1, 1910, as 950 miners were locked out of Ely pit in Penyraig in a row over wages. This triggered a strike across the Cambrian Combine network of pits involving thousands of miners. Three months later, only one mine remained in operation, Llwynypia’s Glamorgan Colliery, where manager Leonard Llewellyn had transformed the pit and Powerhouse into his industrial stronghold, protected by around 100 policemen.
The sound of a trumpeter echoing through the streets early on the morning of November 7 summoned the miners to action. Anyone attempting to get to work found their path blocked.
A crowd of thousands, furious at rumours that Cardiff workers were keeping the mine running, gathered at the Llwynypia colliery. Mining leader Will John called for calm. Initially the mood was good-humoured, but some started pelting stones and as the wooden fencing around the colliery was ripped up for makeshift weapons, the Powerhouse was exposed to attack.
Police responded with baton charges, and the miners were driven back to Tonypandy Square. And there, beyond midnight, they continued to defy police.
Fearing that they were on the verge of losing control, the chief constable requested Army reinforcements from Tidworth barracks. But Home Secretary Winston Churchill stopped the troops at Swindon. Instead, he sent 200 constables and 70 Metropolitan Police horsemen.
The miners gathered at Mid-Rhondda Athletic Ground the following day and were read a telegram from Churchill: “You may give the following message from me to the miners: Their best friends here are greatly distressed at the trouble which has broken out and will do their best to help them meet fair treatment...
“But rioting must cease at once so the inquiry shall not be prejudiced and to prevent the credit of the Rhondda Valley being injured. Confiding in the good sense of the Cambrian Combine workmen, we are holding back the soldiers for the present and sending police instead.”
On the field where Penygraig played Australia and Wales beat England in their first ever rugby league clash, the mood was positive. Satisfied that troops weren’t going to be deployed, the miners marched to the Powerhouse to resume a peaceful picket. But violence erupted once more.
Every window in the Powerhouse was shattered. The order was given for mounted police to charge. A two-hour battle left scores of men wounded on both sides and one collier dead from skull injuries. Some miners were chased into Llwynypia, but the majority flooded into Tonypandy. Dunraven Street became a scene of carnage, as shops were smashed, looted and ransacked of their goods.
It was a riot yes, but as the BBC Wales documentary that was screened on the centenary told us, it was also “a Rising, a brief but deliberate act of defiance by a desperate people – a Rising against their masters, the coal-owners who would deny them a living wage; a Rising against the State which – despite the assurances of the Home Secretary – seems willing to use all its might on one side of the argument.”
And this is when might is brought to bear, Churchill sending the 18th Hussars and Lancashire Fusiliers, who go to their billets in Llwynypia. Troops remained in Tonypandy well into the next year. But their commander, General Macready proved to less willing to go along with the demands of the coal owners and the magistrates than they may have thought.
His measured assessment of the standoff at the Powerhouse confirms the analysis of later historians – the miners were never trying to occupy the colliery, they were responding to what they saw as the owners and police colluding to make a symbolic stand against them.
The strike ended a year after it began. The miners – bitter, hungry and suffering the indignity of their children being fed in soup kitchens – returned to work after accepting the same deal MP William “Mabon” Abraham had negotiated for them in the first place.
Around £1m had been lost in wages. For 3,000 miners, there weren’t even jobs to go back to. Yet the legacy of the Tonypandy Riots can be seen as a victory for the men who risked their lives for their beliefs – 1910 remains a watershed moment in Britain’s industrial history. The strike may not have been a success, but the Rhondda miners now knew they had the power to bring their industry to a halt and could negotiate in the future from a position of strength.
Within two years, the government had brought in the first Minimum Wage Act, while the new generation of Rhondda miners’ leaders published a visionary manifesto for change in the union and in the industry, The Miners’ Next Step.
And the Powerhouse is a crucial part of this story. It’s part of our story. Many local people have recognised the need to preserve and repurpose it – to use an iconic building from our past to benefit future generations.
In 2007 the Rhondda Powerhouse Trust was set up and there were exciting plans and talk of developing a community hub with office space, cafes and even a micro-brewery. Funding was awarded for a feasibility study and architectural drawings gave a tantalising glimpse of what might be as the grandeur of old industry combined with modern design. It was exactly the kind of regeneration Mid-Rhondda craves. Tonypandy has suffered the ignominy of being named Britain’s Worst High Street and has been in desperate need of investment.
But the plans didn’t take off. After trying without success to secure funding for more than a decade, the Trust was dissolved in January 2019. The Powerhouse was then bought at auction for £35,000 by a one-man company describing its main business as “renting and operating of Housing Association real estate”. And now it’s been sold on to be auctioned off once more.
Phil Rowlands, who was central to the recent campaign that saved “The Mid” – the historic Mid-Rhondda Athletic Field – said that company “stands to make a tidy profit from simply buying and selling a massive slice of Rhondda’s heritage. The Powerhouse has rightly been called Rhondda’s castle and played a central tole in events that shook the nation and paved the way for securing a minimum wage for all”.
Mr Rowlands added: “We simply seem to have forgotten how significant and important Rhondda’s heritage is. It’s every bit as significant as that of north Wales which recently secured World Heritage status for their slate quarries. We seem to let things slip so easily through our fingers. It grieves me when people talk of it as a eyesore as though they are unable to imagine its former glory or what it could become again. Perhaps if the Trust’s original architects’ plans were shared with the public people would grasp the vision.”
Novelist Catrin Collier certainly has the vision to imagine a new incarnation for the Powerhouse, as she explained: “If only money could be raised to buy, secure it and make it safe. It could be transformed into film studios to house creative projects and train up and coming directors, actors and crew. There are times when I wish I was a millionaire. It could provide a much-needed boost to the local economy. The creative industries are booming in the most unlikely places. People raised their eyebrows when the old Ford Factory became a film studio in Swansea but look at all the films that gave been made there since. The one thing the Welsh have never lacked is talent. Just think what an ‘on the job’ training centre this could prove to be for the Rhondda with real and tangible prospects for the participants.”
Rhondda-born television producer John Geraint believes we must hold on to what the Powerhouse symbolises: “I made the BBC documentary, ‘Tonypandy Riots’, which marked the centenary of Cambrian Combine Dispute in 2010. The more I researched the history for that film, the more crucial the role of the Powerhouse became in the story. The mine-owners deliberately chose it as their ‘citadel’. Filming inside the building with Eddie Butler, the scale of the place was just so impressive. Why should it be saved? Well, we’re all watching on our TV screens right now the bravery of civilians facing down armed soldiers on their own streets. Every time we let go of a piece of the past, every time we stop remembering the times in our own history when ordinary people have stood up for themselves against the might of an army, we make such stands all the harder to make, wherever in this world they’re needed.”
The fate of the Powerhouse has evoked a passionate response in those further from the valley. Broadcaster and writer Will Millard, who presents the current BBC series Hidden Wales: Last Chance to Save, took one look at it and said: “Wow – seriously hope this building finds a conscientious and sensitive developer, immense history.”
Peter Wakelin, the art historian and heritage expert, agreed on the Powerhouse’s potential: “This is an iconic building for its historical associations, an impressive structure and a flexible space for new uses,” he said.
On social media, meanwhile, many have pointed out the irony of what we choose to preserve in Wales: “It is really troubling how much of our industrial built heritage has been lost and totally disrespected, whilst stately homes and castles are venerated,” tweeted Gaynor Jones “We have left it too late to protect so much of the history of those who built the industrial revolution.”
But is it too late to rescue Rhondda’s industrial citadel? The online auction opens on March 21 and closes on March 23 when its fate will be decided with the click of a mouse. Those who care about how cherishing our past can benefit our future should not feel powerless to save the Powerhouse.
Details of the Powerhouse online auction can be found here.
