You won't travel far in the former industrial heartlands of Wales without seeing the detritus of what once was. Thriving factories, collieries and industries which created the communities and families around it. Much of it now gone or still there and falling apart.
The end of March 2022 marks the 15th anniversary of the closure of one of the Rhondda's biggest employers of the 20th century, Burberry. But it's not known as Burberry in close quarters, it's Polikoffs through and through - lots of locals still refer to the Ynyswen site as that now.
But that site is currently a hive of activity and bucks the trend of the eye-rolling cliche that the south Wales valleys are good-for-nothing employment wastelands where everyone travels out for work every day. The same building that housed Polikoffs, and later global fashion house Burberry, on the Abergorki Industrial Estate still has its baby blue, zig-zag roofed outer shell it had in its heyday.
