Out Of The Blue Artifacts A Library of a lifetime of collecting
Old Penybont Road – Penybont Cwmtillery.
An image of Old Penybont Road taken from the New Bridge End Hotel, Cwmtillery. In very early reports on this area Old Penybont Road was known as Railway Terrace. Old Penybont Road was on the western side of the valley, from Alma Street to the level crossing at Brynmorgan Terrace. New Penybont Road was from the New Bridgend Inn up to the Fountain Inn. Both Bridgend Inn’s took their name from the original stone bridge that spanned the River Tylery at Penybont, now long buried below Henley’s Bus Depot. The bridge also lent its name to the Penybont Colliery.
The cottages along the Old Penybont Road have been renumbered over the years but the information below is from the latter half of the 1890’s
In the center of the image (as seen in the featured image above) can be seen numbers 1 and 2 Penybont Cottages. Next to the cottages just behind the lorry was the Britannia Inn, later locally known as the “Old Maids Inn” as two sisters were the tenants in later years. Next to the Britannia Inn were numbers 3 and 4 Penybont Cottages and far right was the Old Bridge End Inn. My grandparents Mr and Mrs William and Daisy Bennett lived at 2 Penybont Cottage though it was later re-numbered 16 as seen on later maps.
The Old Bridgend Inn.
The Old Bridge End Inn (as seen left – or far right in the featured image above) when Mr Benjamin Fieldhouse was the landlord.
In the early 1900’s, Mr Benjamin Fieldhouse applied to transfer his license at the Old Bridgend Inn to a new hotel he had intended to build at the bottom of Wallace’s Lane on Alma Street. There were however many objections from the Mount Pleasant Inn and the New Bridgend Inn over his plans and his application was denied.
(More information on the inns and landlords to be uploaded).
Griffiths Street.
Before the new Penybont Bridge was built there was a level crossing between the Old Bridge End Inn and New Bridge End Hotel. The area of Penybont was also accessed by a very steep road leading down from behind the Mount Pleasant Inn, this road was called Griffiths Street, built by the Griffiths Building Club and locally known as Hill Street.
The Later Years.
I believe the Old Bridge End Inn was closed in the 1920’s and the Britannia Inn closed during the 1950’s-60’s. This area was cleared in the early 1970’s and the valley filled in during the Land Reclamation Scheme of 1974, which at the time was the largest of its kind in Europe. The valley was completely filled with waste, landscaped and now the site upon which the Abertillery Comprehensive School, fields and the Abertillery Sports Centre is built.