Rhymney and its shops

The stories of shops in Rhymney offers many fascinating and important insights into town’s heritage and history.

Perhaps the most famous local shop in many respects was the (Twyn) Carno Shop. This was already in operation in 1831 when Andrew Buchan, a Scotsman working on local farms as a carpenter, was engaged by the Bute Ironworks to straighten and deepen the River Rhymney to prevent flooding and create more space to build a fourth blast furnace.

Buchan hired a significant number of labourers, mainly Irish, to undertake the work, paying them in notes to be used to buy goods at the Carno Shop, despite this being outlawed by an 1831 act of parliament called the Truck Act. After the merger to form the Rhymney Ironworks Company in 1837, Buchan became the manager of the company’s shop at the Lawns, in addition to his role as the Brewery Manager, and the Carno Shop became the company’s upper shop in Rhymney.

The 1841 census shows Buchan in charge at the Lawns shop and a young 20-year-old John Price as manager at the Carno Shop with 5 assistants. After Buchan’s death in 1870, the Lawns shop was run by his son for a while before William Pritchard who had joined the shop as an assistant in 1846 as a 14-year-old boy took over. He was followed by David Benjamin ‘DB’ Jones, father of Thomas ‘TJ’ Jones, who also ran a company farm.

The Carno Shop and the Lawns shop continued as truck shops in effect until a famous case was brought against the company in 1885 by the Crown Treasury for supplying Beer and Groceries to workmen in contravention of the Truck Act.

The focus of the case was that the Buchan shop was a shop run by Rhymney Iron Company and that workers were in effect being compelled to spend their wages there for goods. The Crown won the case and in 1886 the truck system effectively came to an end in Rhymney.

In 1858, a small independent draper’s shop was established in Rhymney at Cwm Siôn Mathew Square, which was situated where the Lady Tyler Terrace and Brynteg Crescent now meet. It was established by 25-year-old David Morgan who hailed from Caecrwn, Battle just north of Brecon, who also opened a shop at nearby Pontlottyn.

The Rhymney shop closed in 1871. A year earlier Morgan had taken a risk in opening a large department store in the growing town of Abertillery, which paid off eventually as he joined forces there with John Owen of Pontlottyn to form Morgan & Owen, also known as the Pontlottyn Stores which continued trading into the late 1970s. The shop is now a pub called The Pontlottyn.

In 1879, Morgan opened a small draper’s shop on The Hayes in Cardiff which expanded towards the Royal Arcade in 1884. He opened a second shop in St Mary Street in 1898 that was accessible from The Hayes through the New Central Arcade, which became the Morgan Arcade.

Morgan became a director of The Cardiff Arcade Company in 1892, and the store went on to become one of the most famous and successful department stores in Cardiff and Wales bring closing in the early 2000s.