place

Argoed, Caerphilly

Communities in Caerphilly County BoroughGwent geography stubsVillages in Caerphilly County Borough

Argoed (Welsh for 'by a wood' / 'by a grove') is a village, community and an electoral ward in the Sirhowy Valley between Blackwood and Tredegar in Caerphilly County Borough in south Wales. The population of the community and ward at the 2011 census was 2,769. As a community, Argoed also contains the villages of Markham and Hollybush. Before 1960 the village was served by Argoed railway station. This was initially a stop on the Sirhowy Tramroad, which opened in 1822. The tramroad was converted to a conventional standard gauge railway in 1865, the Sirhowy Railway. The station closed in 1960 and the railway has been converted into a cycle path. Zephaniah Williams, prosecuted for his part in the Chartist Newport Rising in 1839, was born in the village in 1795.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Argoed, Caerphilly (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Argoed, Caerphilly
Newport Road,

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Argoed, CaerphillyContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.6935 ° E -3.1922 °
placeShow on map

Address

Newport Road

Newport Road
NP12 0AS , Argoed
Wales, United Kingdom
mapOpen on Google Maps

Share experience

Nearby Places

Oakdale Colliery
Oakdale Colliery

Oakdale Colliery was a coal mine located in the Sirhowy Valley, one of the valleys of South Wales. In the early years of the twentieth century the need for coal was growing both in America and Europe, and local business men in Wales were looking for new opportunities to fill the demand.Among these were a group known as the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company, made up of wealthy industrialists from the Maclaren, Markham, Pochin, Whitworth and Wyllie families. They decided to create a group of collieries in the Sirhowy Valley, which explorations had told them contained rich seams of " black gold." One of these was at the small rural hamlet of Rhiw Syr Dafydd. Work began clearing the site for the new colliery at Ty Mellyn, Oakdale, with the sinking of the pit in 1907. Waterloo shaft followed in 1911. The shafts, North (upcast), and South, were 626 and 650 yards deep respectively, and were the largest diameter shafts in South Wales at the time.Opened in 1911, the colliery was owned by the Oakdale Navigation Collieries Ltd, a subsidiary of the Tredegar Iron Company. At its peak in 1938 it employed a workforce of 2,235, when production reached one million tons per year. Oakdale was linked to Markham colliery and the Celynen North colliery in Newbridge in the late 1970s and early 1980s, making it the largest colliery in Gwent. The pit closed in 1989 and the tips have now been landscaped and converted into platforms for industrial development.The former site of Oakdale Colliery now sites Islwyn High School, which opened in 2016 to former students from Oakdale Comprehensive School, Pontllanfraith Comprehensive School and Cwmcarn Comprehensive School. Of the three, the Pontllanfraith school is the only one still standing, with no obvious plans in sight.