Sirhowy River

Sirhowy River (Welsh: Afon Sirhywi) is a river in Wales that runs through the South Wales Coalfield. Its source lies at approximately 1,500 feet above sea level on the slopes of the broad and barren plateau of Cefn Pyllau-duon above the town of Tredegar, which separates it from the Rhymney River in the west. The area is one of the locally-named Heads of the Valleys, the latter of which local historian Oliver Jones (1969) described in his 1969 book The early days of Sirhowy and Tredegar as 'a series of parallel valleys, each drained by the little river from which it got its name.' Jones correspondingly observed that the Sirhowy river gave its name to the Sirhowy Valley.

Around 1676, William Morgan (of Machen and Tredegar) married Elizabeth Dayrell, the daughter of Edward Lewis of Bletchingdon, Oxfordshire, and the widow of Sir Francis Dayrell. With her huge dowry, Morgan bought land in Bedwellty, which became known as the Bedwellty Estate, through which the Sirhowy River flowed. Welsh scholar and Anglican priest E. T. Davies (1965) observed that, with the local 'abundance of iron-ore, outcrop coal ... and supplies of limestone', the water power which the river provided 'saw the establishment of the new iron industry between 1757 and 1800. Later, local historian Roger Phillips (1990), a former tenant of the Tredegar Estate, observed that the river shared 'in the lucrative exploitation of the mineral resources in the northern part of the county.'