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International connections have continued in the twentieth century. Belgian refugees worked in shell factories at Blaenavon during World War One, and the Canadian Army provided expertise for the development of open cast mining during World War Two, part of a programme which contributed significantly to the British war effort. Given the importance of British technological and organisational development during the Industrial Revolution and its place in the international transfer of technology, the significance of Blaenavon extends far beyond the bounds of the South Wales Valleys, of Wales or of the United Kingdom. |
Blaenavon International Links
Blaenavon has many international links. Many Irish migrants were employed at its mines and ironworks in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s. Workers came from as far as northern Italy. At times of economic depression in the 1820s and 1840s many skilled workers from Blaenavon sought their fortunes in the United States, some of them taking valuable skills to American ironmasters. In one week in 1848 no less than fifty people left Blaenavon for the United States. In the 1850s Australia came to rival America as a destination for migrants.
From the 1860s rails from Blaenavon were being supplied to railway companies in Russia, Finland, India and Canada. In about 1860 the Blaenavon Company negotiated with the French firm of Petin, Gudet et Cie to use their patent process in a mill to roll iron for weldless tyres. In the 1880s, as local supplies of iron ore were becoming exhausted, the Blaenavon Company began to import Spanish ore which was shipped from Bilbao, and carried up the valley by rail from Newport docks. The most significant international connections of this period came through the transfer of the steelmaking process developed at Blaenavon by Percy Gilchrist and Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, which was publicly announced in London in March 1878. Within four years it was being used at works in France, Belgium, Germany, the Habsburg Empire and Russia, and the American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie paid 250,000 dollars for the right to use the process in the United States.
Blaenavon Ironworks has been in state care since 1975. At the time of coming into guardianship the monument was in a ruinous state. Little or no repair to the masonry structures had been carried out for a century, and stone had been robbed for building elsewhere.Much of the site was buried in rubble and waste.
