Beaufort Iron Works

Overview

An ironworks that created the village around it, took its own coal and ironstone from a scatter of pits with names like Cinder Pit and Bwlchygarn, changed hands for £300,000 and was shut within a few years of the sale — and whose ground was so thoroughly reworked by opencast machinery in the 1970s that almost nothing of it is left to see.

History

Edward Kendall (1750-1807) and his brother Jonathan took a 99-year lease at the head of the Ebbw valley in 1779 and built an ironworks on it. The settlement that grew up around the works was first named after them — Cendl, the Welsh form of Kendall, is still the village's Welsh name — before taking the name Beaufort from the ground landlord. The partnership became Kendall & Bevan in 1807 on Edward Kendall's death. Output peaked in 1830 at 7,276 tons of iron, and by 1833 four furnaces were in blast. That year the works passed to the Bailey brothers, Joseph and Crawshay, for £45,000, as an extension of their operation at Nantyglo. Under the Baileys the works was managed by William Partridge (1800-1862), a Suffolk-born ironmaster who married Charlotte Bevan, daughter of the local innkeeper, and ran Beaufort until his death; the Partridge family went on to build the colliery business later known as Partridge Jones. The works and its pits were sold to the Nantyglo & Blaina Iron and Coal Company for £300,000 in 1871 and closed within a few years, sources placing the end variously in 1873 and 1877.

Geology

Beaufort stood on the northern outcrop of the South Wales Coalfield, where the Coal Measures reach the surface at the head of the valleys and carry ironstone as well as coal — the reason ironworks were built here rather than at the ore. Limestone for the furnaces came from Trefil on the Carboniferous Limestone outcrop to the north, brought down by tramroad. The Mining Remediation Authority's plan for the works and its pits records the material worked simply as coal and ironstone in unnamed veins, which is a fair description of how patchy and irregular the ironstone was.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (well documented example)

Workings

The works drew its raw materials from its own scatter of pits and levels around Beaufort and Brynmawr rather than from a single colliery — among them Bwlchygarn, the Tunnel Pit, the Cinder Pit, Pantyfforest and the Bryn Pit, alongside water and bridge levels. Four furnaces were in blast by 1833. Limestone was carried in from the Trefil quarries by tramroad, the standard arrangement for the heads-of-the-valleys works, which sat between their coal and their flux rather than on either.

Closure

Sold to the Nantyglo & Blaina Iron and Coal Company for £300,000 in 1871, the works closed within a few years — 1873 and 1877 are both given. One account instead has the works closing soon after the death of its long-serving manager William Partridge in 1862, which is hard to reconcile with a sale of that size nine years later; the sale date is the better attested of the two.

What remains

Effectively nothing. The ground south of Beaufort Hill that the works occupied was cleared long ago and built over with housing, and the surrounding pits and tips were remediated by opencast working in the early 1970s. Giant blocks of slag lay on the site until the most recent phase of development removed them.

None identified. The works house survived long enough to become a fever hospital in 1902 before being demolished, and the last visible traces were the slag blocks cleared during recent housing development.

Redevelopment

Housing covers the site of the works itself; the wider mineral ground was worked out and reshaped by opencast coal mining in the early 1970s.

Abandoned workings can be dangerous — unstable ground, uncapped shafts, flooding and bad air are common even where a site looks safe from the surface. This entry describes history and general location only; it is not an access guide.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Edward (1750-1807) and Jonathan Kendall established the Beaufort works on a 99-year lease in 1779, and the settlement that grew around it was named Cendl after them. ^1,2
• Output peaked in 1830 at 7,276 tons of iron, and four furnaces were in blast by 1833. ^1,2
• The Bailey brothers, Joseph and Crawshay, bought the works for £45,000 in 1833 as an extension of their Nantyglo operation, and it was managed for them by William Partridge (1800-1862). ^1,2
• The works drew coal and ironstone from its own pits and levels around Beaufort and Brynmawr, including Bwlchygarn, the Tunnel Pit, the Cinder Pit, Pantyfforest and the Bryn Pit, with limestone brought in by tramroad from Trefil. ^1,3
• The works and pits were sold to the Nantyglo & Blaina Iron and Coal Company for £300,000 in 1871 and closed within a few years; 1873 and 1877 are both given, while a separate account has the works closing soon after Partridge's death in 1862. (disputed) ^1,2
• The ground the works occupied south of Beaufort Hill was cleared and built over with housing, and the surrounding mineral ground was reworked by opencast mining in the early 1970s; giant blocks of slag survived on site until recent development. ^1,2

Photographs & further reading

This page doesn't try to reproduce everything — these are the best original sources found for this mine.

Sources

1. (primary) Beaufort Iron Works and its collieries — welshcoalmines.co.uk
2. (secondary) Beaufort, Blaenau Gwent — Wikipedia
3. (primary) Mine plan SWR1646 — Beaufort / Brynmawr and associated pits and levels — Mining Remediation Authority, via the BGS OGC API

Record created: 25 August 2026 · Last researched: 25 August 2026