A b o u t U s

 

Let us introduce ourselves!  

We are Llynfi Valley Community Transport Ltd, a registered charity based in Maesteg, Bridgend. We are a non-profit making group and wish to promote social inclusion by providing affordable, reliable and accessible transport to community groups throughout the county and neighbouring districts. 

We would like to offer you the chance to join our membership and take advantage of our very competitively priced transport, and to that end we have enclosed our promotional CD and our leaflet/application form to provide you with the information on our group. 

Should you wish to find out more or become a member of the group, please contact us at the above address or on the telephone number above. 

We also have a website www.llynfivct.org.uk  and email addresses (colin.bevan@btconnect.com /  lynne.lvct@btconnect.com) for your convenience. 

We look forward to hearing from you and being able to provide you with all the help we can.

Who can use Community Transport?

Although all schemes wish to be as open as possible, the majority of the schemes are restricted to those meeting the following criteria:

Those groups who do not have access to public transport

Those groups who are unable to use public transport, i.e. because of a disability

Those groups who service the volunteer sector.

 

Bridgend Community Transport Guide

We are keen to develop further community transport schemes within the County, particularly schemes that can complement existing passenger transport.

For information and advice on scheme, please telephone 01656 736945 or contact the Community Transport Officer. at Bridgend Transport Officer. 

 

The Maesteg Sports Centre

The Maesteg Sports Centre is located in an award-winning building believed to be the only one of its kind left in the country. The Corn stores, as it is known, dates back to 1828 when iron was manufactured on the site.

A few reminders of this period of industrial expansion can be seen at the Centre, including a truncated iron furnace and the magnificent ‘Corn stores’. This building housed a beam engine (possibly two) and air pump to supply the furnace with blast. Both the furnace and blast engine house have been incorporated into the new Sports Centre and the enlightened blending of the old and new has been undertaken to a very high standard. The ‘Corn stores’ (so called because fodder for the North’s Navigation Company horses was stored inside) is now the entrance to the centre.

Anyone interested in this historic site can gain more information by visiting the centre and enquiring at reception. At various places beam boxes and the ends of iron girders can be seen in the walls with the huge cheeks of the actual rocking beam having been pivoted on the central wall. Unfortunately little information is available about the original layout but in all probability the vertical steam cylinder was erected in the front section of the building with the air pump to the rear. The main air pipe to the furnaces probably passed out the building through the large archway that now gives access into the area.

It is most appropriate that the ‘Cornstores’ should remain as a link with history in the Llynfi Valley that must be one of the most fascinating localities in the whole of Wales .

The Blast Engine House, which has now been restored to its former glory, is the last of its kind in Wales – the most significant architectural relic of the iron industry which remains in the country. Although Merthyr Tydfil was the home of the Iron Industry throughout the world, the remains of its early industrial past have been almost totally erased, leaving Maesteg with a gem of a building.

The Blast Engine House was part of the Llynfi Ironworks, known locally as “Yr waith Newydd” or the New Works. The Old Works or “Yr Hen Gwaith” were those belonging to the Maesteg Ironworks which opened in 1828. This site has been obliterated by the Central Coal Washery.

The Llynfi Ironworks was built on land at Nant Y Crynwydd Farm. The first two furnaces were blown in 1839 and 1841 and the works were able to exploit the existence in the Valley of both iron ore and coal seams.

The Engine House contained the massive Cornish Beam Engines which blew air into the furnaces and thus created the blast. They had no frames and it was the Building itself which supported them with its massive structure.

The Building had to be strong to withstand the vibration, and many of the stone blocks were dovetailed together with molten lead. At the top level were located the giant beams of the two engines, pivoting on fulcrums carried on top of a central wall and connected by rods to their respective pistons. Steam for the engines was raised from several Cornish boilers located on the south side of the Building with the smoke being drawn along an underground flue to a tall stack.

At its peak, the company controlled 4 Blast Furnaces, 54 Puddling Furnaces, 6 Mills, 14 Coal Levels on Garnwen Mountain and 12 at Coegnant; 2 Iron Ore Patches, 9 Smithies and 3 Carpenter’s Shops. The Brick Yard was manufacturing 17,000 bricks per week and there were 107 Coke Furnaces. In all, the company employed 1,500 men and women as well as 100 horses. The beginning of the end for the works, as for so many others in South Wales , was the invention and perfection of the Bessemer process of steel making. This resulted in the replacement of iron by steel in general engineering.

The Bessemer process was expensive to install and local ores were unsuitable, which would have meant importing outside ores into the Valley. The two local iron works merged in an attempt to meet the challenge but in 1878, the company which had bought the works in 1872, and was run by the Brogden family, collapsed.

There was one further attempt to revive iron making in the tow by the Llynfi and Tondu Coal and Iron Company, but this failed in 1886 and thus ended Maesteg’s connection with the age of iron.

The company was taken over for £250,000 in 1889 by North’s Navigation, which concentrated entirely on exploiting the Valley’s vast coal reserves. The machinery was removed from the Blast Engine House in the 1890’s and sold in England, and from then on, the Building was used for a variety of purposes, including the storage of food for the pit ponies – hence its nickname of the ‘Cornstores’.

For almost a century, the Building gradually decayed, and eventually stood alone in splendid isolation as the old Port Talbot railway was ripped up and then the NCB engine sheds removed. Its only companion has been the ruined Blast Furnace which stands alongside and which stood 46 feet high until it was decided to use the stone to build the tower of St.Michael’s Church in the 1940’s.

The Building was under threat of demolition, with its roof gone and its stonework starting to crumble, but a concerted campaign by local people and conservationists persuaded the Secretary of State for Wales that it should be retained and classified an Ancient Monument .

Ogwr Borough Council agreed to incorporate the Building in an imaginative project for the Sports Centre and indeed the Blast Engine House became the focal point for the whole complex.

Painstaking restoration work was carried out using original materials and techniques, and nothing has been added or taken away. The stone walls were sandblasted and built up at roof level with Forest of Dean sandstone, which was a perfect match for the original stone.

The arched cast iron windows have been retained where possible, or replaced with wooden windows of identical design.

The original stone floor has been relaid, with missing flags replaced by granite cobbles, which were removed from the old streets in Newport . The pitched and slate roof is the ‘piece de resistance’, and is specially illuminated inside where it has been faced with pine cladding. The roof timbers have been constructed to exactly the same design as the originals.

Inside the interior dividing wall with its arched passageway, has been retained and built back up with new stone, and at first floor level, a balcony has been provided, which gives visitors a vantage point for looking down into the well of the Building.

This sports Centre has become an arresting architectural feature in Maesteg which will be of interest for generations. The old Blast Engine House faces an entirely new future – not as a sterile museum piece – but as part of a Centre which is totally relevant to the needs of Maesteg’s community.