Glyncorrwg
Encyclopedia
Glyncorrwg is a village
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

 in Britain. It is set in the Afan Valley
River Afan
The River Afan is a river in southwest Wales whose river valley formed the territory of the medieval Lords of Afan. The town of Aberavon grew up on the banks of the river, and was later subsumed by the larger centre of population known as Port Talbot...

, in south Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

.

Glyncorrwg is also the name of an electoral ward and a community
Community (Wales)
A community is a division of land in Wales that forms the lowest-tier of local government in Wales. Welsh communities are analogous to civil parishes in England....

 covering the village and surrounding countryside, in Neath Port Talbot
Neath Port Talbot
Neath Port Talbot is a county borough and one of the unitary authority areas of Wales. Neath Port Talbot is the 8th most populous county in Wales and the third most populous county borough....

 county borough
County borough
County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control. They were abolished by the Local Government Act 1972 in England and Wales, but continue in use for lieutenancy and shrievalty in...

.

History

Glyncorrwg was once an important coal mining
Coal mining
The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

 centre, typical of the South Wales Valleys
South Wales Valleys
The South Wales Valleys are a number of industrialised valleys in South Wales, stretching from eastern Carmarthenshire in the west to western Monmouthshire in the east and from the Heads of the Valleys in the north to the lower-lying, pastoral country of the Vale of Glamorgan and the coastal plain...

. But when the closure of the local pits came in 1970 everything changed. Mines
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 buildings were cleared away, factories closed, and people left to find new jobs.

Then in 1990 the hideaway village of Glyncorrwg decided to take advantage of the beautiful local scenery and complement it with a series of pond
Pond
A pond is a body of standing water, either natural or man-made, that is usually smaller than a lake. A wide variety of man-made bodies of water are classified as ponds, including water gardens, water features and koi ponds; all designed for aesthetic ornamentation as landscape or architectural...

s along the narrow valley. Trout
Trout
Trout is the name for a number of species of freshwater and saltwater fish belonging to the Salmoninae subfamily of the family Salmonidae. Salmon belong to the same family as trout. Most salmon species spend almost all their lives in salt water...

 fishing, coarse fishing
Coarse fishing
Coarse fishing is a term used in the United Kingdom and Ireland for angling for coarse fish, which are those types of freshwater fish other than game fish . The sport and the techniques used are particularly popular in the United Kingdom and mainland Europe.-History:The term "coarse fishing"...

, and canoeing
Canoeing
Canoeing is an outdoor activity that involves a special kind of canoe.Open canoes may be 'poled' , sailed, 'lined and tracked' or even 'gunnel-bobbed'....

 are our most popular sports, plus miles of old flat railway trackbed lines and steep mountain
Mountain
Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...

 slopes providing days worth of cycling
Cycling
Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...

, hillwalking
Hillwalking
In the British Isles, the terms hillwalking or fellwalking are commonly used to describe the recreational outdoor activity of walking on hills and mountains, often with the intention of visiting their summits...

 and mountain biking
Mountain biking
Mountain biking is a sport which consists of riding bicycles off-road, often over rough terrain, using specially adapted mountain bikes. Mountain bikes share similarities with other bikes, but incorporate features designed to enhance durability and performance in rough terrain.Mountain biking can...

.

The recent planning application by ECO2 for a wind farm
Wind farm
A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electric power. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other...

 in Corrwg Fechan was turned down by Neath and Port Talbot District Council at their meeting on the 10th of December 2007. ECO2 have appealed this decision. Plus the residents of Glyncorrwg wanted to keep its beauty the highest priority and the whole village signed a refusal form to stop this windfarm business from coming to the village...and we won.

Glyncorrwg in South Wales was once a mining village, with several pits and drift mines within three miles.

Since the mining industry closed in the 1970s Glyncorrwg became quite run down; however this small village is an example to every community on how to pick yourselves up and take advantage of what you've got but with the coal industry vanishing from the valleys, it also meant that unemployment was on the rise. Now in 2011 there is still a lot of unemployment and nearly half the village is claiming job seekers allowance

Glyncorrwg has not only developed some rather nice ponds where you can fish, but has a wide variety of mountain bike rides to suite all levels of fitness. The mountain bike rides are listed in the top ten in the world by bike riders.

However if you want a more gentle ride, you can cycle along what used to be the old Mineral Railway Line down to Cymmer, Abercregan
Abercregan
Abercregan is a village in the Welsh county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Glamorgan. It is situated around north-east of Port Talbot and just west of Cymmer, and is also close to the River Afan...

, Pont-rhyd-y-fen cross the river back up to Afan Argoed, Dyffryn, Cymmer and then back up to Glyncorrwg.

Glyncorrwg Health Centre

Dr Julian Tudor Hart
Julian Tudor Hart
Julian Tudor Hart is a British physician.- Biography :He studied medicine at Cambridge University and in London....

 established a famous research and teaching practice in Glyncorrwg. He arrived in 1961 and conducted a series of epidemiologal studies on the practice population - a population of about 1900 which was relatively stable and which he got to know well. He established a health centre committee with a public health focus and demonstrated that systematic case-finding and regular follow-up produced real benefits. In 1987 he found age-standardised death rates under 65 were 28% lower in Glyncorrwg than in nearby Blaengwynfi
Blaengwynfi
Blaengwynfi is a village in the Neath Port Talbot area of South Wales.It is a part of the "Upper Afan Valleys". It used to be a coal mining village, and is directly below the village of "Abergwynfi"...

 over the previous five-year period. This approach, which was the subject of many publications, led eventually to the introduction of the Quality and Outcomes Framework
Quality and Outcomes Framework
The Quality and Outcomes Framework is a system for the performance management and payment of general practitioners in the National Health Service in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland...

 which rewarded GPs for meeting targets for intervention in the management of disease.

Glyncorrwg Coal Company

The South Wales Mineral Railway reached Glyncorrwg in 1863. It was always short of funds so was leased to the Glyncorrwg Coal Company, which became the Glyncorrwg Colliery Company Limited in 1870. This company operated a local coal mine and needed the railway to cheaply transport coal down to Briton Ferry
Briton Ferry
Briton Ferry is a town and community in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales. The town encompasses the electoral wards of Briton Ferry East and Briton Ferry West....

.

Government and politics

The electoral ward of Glyncorrwg falls within the parliamentary constituency of Aberavon
Aberavon (UK Parliament constituency)
Aberavon is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It returns one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system.-History:...

. The Glyncorrwg ward includes the remote village of Glyncorrwg on the floor of valley
of the River Corrwg. It is surrounded by open moorland
Moorland
Moorland or moor is a type of habitat, in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome, found in upland areas, characterised by low-growing vegetation on acidic soils and heavy fog...

 which in turn is surrounded by dense coniferous forest. Glyncorrwg is bounded by the wards of Blaengwrach
Blaengwrach
Blaengwrach is a village near Glynneath and Resolven in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales. It is also the name of a community and an electoral ward of Neath Port Talbot county borough. There are, however, some differences between the boundaries of the community and the ward...

 to the north; Treherbert
Treherbert
Treherbert is a village and community situated at the head of the Rhondda Fawr valley in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. Treherbert is a former industrial coal mining village which was at its economic peak between 1850 and 1920...

 and Gwynfi
Gwynfi
Gwynfi is an electoral ward of Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales.Gwynfi includes the villages if Abergwynfi and Blaengwynfi. Gwynfi is part of the parish of Glyncorrwg and the parliamentary constituency of Aberavon....

 of Rhondda Cynon Taff
Rhondda Cynon Taff
Rhondda Cynon Taf, or RCT, is a county borough in the South Wales Valleys of Wales. It consists of 3 valleys: the Rhondda Valley, Cynon Valley and Taff-Ely Valley...

 to the east; Gwynfi
Gwynfi
Gwynfi is an electoral ward of Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales.Gwynfi includes the villages if Abergwynfi and Blaengwynfi. Gwynfi is part of the parish of Glyncorrwg and the parliamentary constituency of Aberavon....

 and Cymmer to the south; and Resolven
Resolven (electoral ward)
Resolven is and electoral ward of Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales. Resolven is made up of the parishes of Resolven and Clyne and Melincourt....

 to the west.

In the 2008 local council elections
United Kingdom local elections, 2008
The 2008 United Kingdom local elections were held on 1 May 2008. These elections took place in 137 English Local Authorities and all Welsh Councils....

, the electorate turnout for Aberavon was 56.82%. The results were:
Candidate Party Votes Status
Glyn Rawlings Labour 312 Labour hold
Lindsey "crasher" Milsom Neath Port Talbot Ratepayers 187

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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