Rhondda Through Time - Alun Seward

The casual visitor travelling through the towns and villages that make up the Rhondda Valleys today would find it hard to imagine the once lush mountainsides and forests for which this part of Glamorgan was known. Few images exist of this forgotten rural landscape in the early part of the nineteenth century, before it was carved away in the wake of the country's demand for coal.
For many years the name Rhondda has become a stereotyped image of collieries and poor quality housing surrounded by slag heaps. With coal no longer king, the people of the Rhondda Valleys have had to adapt to new ways of working and living. The images in this book look at how the towns and villages of the Rhondda Valleys have moved on through these years of dramatic social and industrial change, losing the old stereotype but not forgetting its heritage on the way.

Alun Seward, a semi-retired estate agent, was born and bred in Rhondda. Although he has lived for over 25 years in Radyr on the outskirts of Cardiff, he has a great love of Rhondda and its heritage and feels it should be celebrated. An aspiring novelist, he wrote all the text for this book. He has two children and four grandchildren.