Blue Plaque approved for first Welsh Oscar winner

The first Welsh actor to win an Oscar is to be commemorated with a blue plaque in his south Wales hometown to mark 80 years since he received the award.

Two other blue plaques planned for Neath will commemorate the lives of David Thomas, known as “the father of the American Iron Industry” and National Eisteddfod of Wales Archdruid, Dafydd Helsin Rowlands, in the Swansea Valley where they were both from.

A single cabinet member decision to approve the installation of the plaques in 2026 was taken on Thursday, December 11, 2025.

The plaques for Oscar-winner Ray Milland and Dafydd Helsin Rowlands will be the inaugural Commemorative Blue Plaques funded by Neath Port Talbot Council, while the plaque for Engineering innovator David Thomas will be funded by Cilybebyll Community Council.

The council’s Blue Plaque scheme was initially approved in 2024 to celebrate notable people, places and events across the county borough and is one of the key priorities of the council’s Heritage Strategy for 2024-2039.

For the next ten years, two plaques per year will be funded by the council alongside options for businesses, groups or individual to self-fund a blue plaque.

The process involves submitting a nomination online to the Heritage NPT Team’s selection panel, with the panel’s recommendations then being reported to cabinet members for a final decision.

Ray Milland, whose childhood home was in Dalton Street (formerly Coronation Street) in Neath, started acting in silent movies in 1929.

His film and TV career spanned more than 50 years, acting with the top stars and film directors of the period. In his later years he appeared in well-known films and TV shows such as Love Story, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, Columbo and Battlestar Galactica.

Not only was Ray Milland the first Welsh person to win an Oscar — for The Lost Weekend in 1946 — he was also the first person to win an Oscar and Cannes Film Festival award in the same year. He has not one but two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Ray Milland died in 1986, aged 79.

Innovator

David Thomas, schooled in Alltwen near Pontardawe, went on to develop an easy method to produce anthracite Iron in a blast furnace, which revolutionised industry in the Swansea Valley, nationally in Wales and later globally in America and across the World.

The locally born innovator was immortalised in the American Iron and Steel Hall of Fame in 2023.

Archdruid Dafydd (David Heslin) Rowlands from Pontardawe won both the Crown and the Prose Medal at the 1969 Eisteddfod, and won a second Crown in 1972.

He was the author of many volumes of poetry and prose, along with several television series and popular scripts which inspired so many of his fellow Welshmen. He was the Archdruid of Wales between 1996 and 1999.

Cllr Cen Phillips, Neath Port Talbot Council’s Cabinet Member for Nature, Tourism and Wellbeing said: “The three people to be commemorated in the next series of Neath Port Talbot Blue Plaques will help raise awareness of the county borough’s rich culture, heritage, language and history.”

Self-funded Blue Plaques as part of the Neath Port Talbot Blue Plaques initiative have already been installed to commemorate screen and stage legend Richard Burton and his mentor Phillip Burton and Port Talbot’s oldest still-operating pub, The Somerset Arms.

Neath Port Talbot Council’s Building Services Team installed the two Burton Blue Plaques and will now move towards installing all Blue Plaques on behalf of Neath Port Talbot Council.