Course: Unit 06 Land

As the unconscious product of the Industrial Revolution, the displaced, hollowed, and scorched landscape of the valleys bears testament to the single greatest exploitation of human and natural resources in Welsh history.

Once the world’s most significant source of tinplate, the works at Treforest both aligns with this narrative and, in its association with Francis Crawshay, diverges from it. Described by his father as, ‘extravagant and indolent’, his principal ‘failing’, in comparison with his tyrannical ‘Iron King’ brothers, appears to have been his compassion for his workers and his willingness to engage with them in their native Welsh tongue. Indeed, a practising Druid, with possible Chartist leanings, Francis presents as an atypical industrialist.

Yet, viewed through a contemporary lens of social and ecological equality, his reverence for nature and interest in workers’ rights seem irreconcilable with the employment of men, women, and children in the dangerous and oppressive conditions of a highly polluting industry that required both the extensive diversion of a watercourse, and the pillaging of natural reserves for profit.

Reflecting on this historic paradox, we will immerse ourselves in the tinplate works, itself an experiential edge between post-industry, recovering woodland, urban, rural, and a once-tamed but now frequently overflowing river, to enter into dialogue with its ruins, explore the balance between humanity and nature and, drawing upon the resources of the contemporary landscape, translate the site into a place of environmentally and socially sustainable making.