What’s in a name: Trehafod

Ken Moon

Today Trehafod is home to the Welsh ‘Coal Mining Experience’ at what remains of the Lewis Merthyr Colliery.

According to the Rhondda Cynon Taf Your Heritage website; “…it was the sinking of the Hafod, Trefor, and Bertie pits to the rich steam coal measures that made Trehafod”.

But how had the area come to be known as Trehafod?

The 1847 tithe maps show several farms in the area: Hafod Uchaf, Hafod Genol, and Hafod Fawr.

When the mineral rights were first leased in 1809 Jeremiah Homfrey opened the first level nearby, the Hafod Level. And when the two brothers, David and John Thomas sunk a colliery in 1850, they also named their colliery after these nearby farms.

The first workers to the area were drawn from the surrounding countryside. The name of Hafod would have been familiar to these Cymraeg speaking agricultural labourers, and it’s easy to understand how they may have applied the names of the farms and pits they were familiar with, to the housing that was then built to accommodate them.

Tref

In medieval Cymru the tref had been the basic unit of administration which might have been applied to a rural area with scattered farmsteads and perhaps a hamlet. Whilst we understand the appellation of Tre to a placename today as signifying a town, in the 1800’s Tre was starting to be widely used in industrial areas of workers housing.

As the population of Hafod grew it became known as Trehafod.

But why were the nearby farms called Hafod? The literal translation of Hafod is a ‘summer dwelling’ and referred to the by the 1800 century well-established seasonal practice of moving livestock from the overwintering pastures, or Hendre, of the valley floor to their summer pastures on the higher ground of the Mynydd.

The name Hafod suggests a more ancient origin. Long before the three farms of Hafod Uchaf, Hafod Genol, and Hafod Fawr were enclosed as three separate farms, they may well have been the site of a summer settlement for the ancient semi-nomadic livestock farming people who practiced collective transhumance in the region.

More research would need to be undertaken to establish if an earlier farming settlement later became the three separate farms which are here today.

Hendre

According to landscape archaeologists’ where you can find a Hafod there is usually  a corresponding Hendre, and we can still find plenty of Hafods and Hendres around the rural landscape of Cymru today. So, if those who were farming this landscape in the 1800’s were engaged the widespread practice of moving livestock seasonally for the best grazing, then where is the Hendre of Trehafod today?

Running along the valley side, above Trehafod itself is Hafod Lane. The name Hafod Lane is suggestive that this may once been a route livestock were driven along between seasonal pastures.

Hafod Lane runs from what is now Trehopkin, up past the three Hafod farms (which are still to be found up on the valley side, rather than where Trehafod sits) and Fferm Llwyncelyn, before turning sharply up-hill above Porth & Wattstown, and on towards Llanwono. From Trahofd itself, following the line of Bridge Street up the side of the valley can see how on an OS map how, before the terraced housing of Llwyncelyn was built, this lane would have taken people and cattle from the valley floor to join with Hafod Lane.

Hendre Rhys

Following the loop of Hafod Lane onto the Llanwono Road you come to Hendre Rhys which is an NRW managed woodland. Before the Forestry Commission planted it up with conifers, this was open hill-top grazing land. Might Hendre Rhys once have been the overwintering pasture of Trehafod?

If it is, then its location turns everything that we think we know about the ancient relationship between Hafods and Hendres on its head. Here we find a Hendre sitting at far higher elevation that the nearby Hafod. So, why do we find a town named after summer grazing pastures in a sheltered valley of better-quality grazing, with a corresponding Hendre on an exposed Mynydd? What is going on?

Does the smog of our industrial history obscure our past relationship with the land?

And if Hafod Rhys is not Trehafods Hendre, then where is it? Was there once another area nearby known as a Hendre, but which now goes by another name? Perhaps Trehopkin, Pwllgwaun, or Pontypridd may once have held a Cae Hendre which has since been lost to History? Perhaps Trehafod itself, re-named for the nearby farms, was itself the Hendre?

And who were the semi-nomadic people who first established the ancient tradition of summer and winter tradition grazing of their livestock in this area?

Sadly, we know so very little about the areas pre-industrial history. History is layered and most of what has been written about the south Wales valleys has understandably focused on the area’s recent industrial past precisely because it is more easily read. But in doing so we have allowed our industrial history to obscure what came before it.

We’ve lost sight of how people once lived sustainably in this landscape, along with our ability to learn from this history and how we might live sustainably here again.

Farmed

In this instance, we at least have the founders of Trehafod to thank for incorporating the name of the local farms into the name of the town, providing us with an important clue as to how this area may have been farmed prior to industrialisation, and long before this too.

We can also find the names of fields and farms incorporated into the names of the streets and buildings of many of our other industrial towns. Gelliwasted Road in Pontypridd is named after Gelliwasted Farm, which can still be found on its original site today.

And from these clues we can gain insights into how this landscape could be farmed in future too.