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IN the first half of the eighteenth century Rhondda was virtually unknown. The upper reaches of Rhondda Fawr were described by Malkin in 1803 as "untameably wild as anything that can be conceived and the few who have taken the pains to explore the scattered magnificence of South Wales agree in recommending this untried route to the English traveller as one of the most curious and striking in the principality." Despite the nearness of the Merthyr "iron cauldron", the Aberdare valley which was the chief steam coal producing area and the few small drift mining villages in lower Rhondda, Treherbert, lying at the foot of the Craig y Llyn, bounded on three sides by mountains, luxuriously wooded and noted for its heavy rainfall and very severe storms was to remain virtually unspoilt and its beauty unsurpassed until the 1850s. The leadership of the very small community was left to the local farmers, the Edwards family (607 acres at Tynewydd and 1,469 acres at Ystradffernol), Howell Llewelyn of Tydraw, William Morgan of Maendy who married into the Edwards family and afterwards farmed Tynewydd, Y stradffernol and Lluestwen besides being Master of the Tynewydd Hounds and an Alderman of the County of Glamorgan. Apart from the low, thatched or tiled, thick walled farms which dotted the hilly wooded slopes there was a cluster of labourers' cottages near the cornfields at the Penyrenglyn strath. Wheat, barley and oats were taken to water grind-mills at Cwm-Saebren and Glyncoli. Apart from the communal sheep shearing, when once a year help came from many miles around, contact with the outside world was limited to visits to the fairs at Neath, Merthyr, Llantrisant and Ynysybwl and news came from the drovers who drove cattle to the Midlands passing through Blaenrhondda, Hirwaun Common, Storey Arms, Hereford along the "Welshman's Way" to Northampton-a journey of some fifteen days. These drovers were an important link with the outside world and acted as bankers. In the early 1840s the "Nebo" Baptists' cause was sufficiently strong enough for a branch chapel (Libanus) to be opened at Penyrenglyn.
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