Mountain Ash

Mountain Ash, an urban district of Glamorganshire, south Wales, in the Aberdare valley on the Cynon, a west bank tributary of the Taff, with stations on the Taff Vale and Great Western railways, 18 m. N.E. of Cardiff. Pop. (1901), 31,093. A branch of the Glamorganshire canal passes through the place. At the beginning of the 19th century Mountain Ash was a small village known only by its Welsh name of Aberpenar, but from 1850, with the development of its collieries, the population rapidly increased. The district has an area of 10,504 acres and comprises; besides Mountain Ash proper, a string of villages, the chief being Cwmpenar, Penrhiwceiber, Abercynon or Aberdare Junction (at the confluence of the Cynon with the Taff) and Ynysybwl, 3 m. to the west on the Clydach. The public buildings include St Margaret's (1862) and St Winifred's (1883), the parish churches of Mountain Ash and Penrhiwceiber respectively; old and new town halls (1864 and 1904), cottage hospital (1896), and a library institute and public hall erected in 1899, at a cost of £8000, by the workmen of Nixon's Navigation collieries. There is a park of 7 acres given in 1897, by Lord Aberdare, whose residence, Duffryn, is in the district. There are also a workmen's institute and a public hall at Penrhiwceiber. The older part of the urban district is included in the parliamentary borough of Merthyr Tydfil, and also shares with Merthyr and Aberdare the services of a stipendiary magistrate.