Will Wales’ once proud industrial history quietly disappear and decay into the arms of nature?
For artist Jon Pountney, who has spent the last decade documenting the remnants of Welsh industrial history, this question is quite relevant.
After moving to Cardiff to study photography in the 1990s, he settled in Wales. Although he has lived there for a long time, he said: “I always like to say that I look at things from a non-native perspective.”
“I’ve always been interested in history, especially recent history – by and large these ruins are relatively new.”
The idea of focusing on industry first occurred to him near his then home in Cardiff, on the Splott coastline, while working on a project that was later shown at Oriel Colwyn in North Wales.
He said: “It’s a very interesting place. It’s not a sandy beach. It’s made of brick rubble from the steelworks at East Moors, which is opposite the beach, and from the so-called slum clearance in the south streets of Splott in the late 1970s.
“So the beach is actually made up of this industrial rubble that was just pushed into the water and left there. From a distance it’s quite picturesque, but when you get closer and look at it more closely, it’s just bricks and rubble.”
He took pictures from all over South Wales and particularly Mid Wales as he began to explore the area beyond Cardiff, starting with the valleys near his current home of Treforest, Rhondda Cynon Taf.
“I’ve seen these amazing sights that are all over the valleys. They’re hidden right in plain sight because there are so many of them.
“What struck me throughout the project is that so many of these spaces are neither protected nor loved nor used,” he said.
“A big part of this project is a warning to the future that these post-industrial spaces of the past are our industrial spaces of the present. When you look at places like Port Talbot – what will the Port Talbot steelworks look like in 100 years?
“I thought of the poem Ozymandias, in which a statue looks out over a wasteland. Once it was a god-like pharaoh figure looking out over a civilization, but now it is just a desert.
“There are quite a few statues in the valleys of the coal and iron magnates, and they now look out into nothingness or into an industrial area. What were once their factories or coal mines have disappeared, replaced in some places by just a lot of sheds.”
Many Welsh industrialists were once among the richest people in the world. But there is not much left of their sphere of influence today. He wonders whether today’s financial giants will suffer a similar fate.
“When you consider how these spaces were managed, how these spaces were administered and the wealth that was created as a result, did that ever have an impact on Wales as a society? That, too, is a story for today.
“The people who work at Port Talbot are getting good wages but all the money that this site must have brought in in the past or perhaps could still bring in if it were state owned, the question is where the profits go and that is basically the subtext of the project.
“Aesthetically it’s about these spaces, but the subtext is what can we learn for the future.”
One place that has stuck in Jon’s memory is Cwmystwyth in Ceredigion, near Aberystwyth.
He explains: “It is a valley with an old gold, lead and copper mine where I believe one of the oldest man-made gold objects in Wales was found not long ago.
“Wow, what a landscape. If it was anywhere else in the world there would be a visitor centre and signs telling you this is the view, but of course in Wales there are only castles.
“The landscape itself, where all the mineral ores were washed out of the mountainsides, greens and oranges, just incredible colors, and I managed to get there just at a time when the light was changing quite quickly with the wind and clouds, and it just looked incredible.
“It made me realize that I need to continue this project.”
“I think nature is doing a huge part in erasing a lot of that history, and I find it incredible the speed at which some of these things are happening.
He described a meeting with a former miner who had spoken of the “hellish landscape” of the spoil heaps and the devastated landscape at the time of the mines and had wondered who would actually want to live in such a place.
But now, 60 years later or so, he said, “It’s me. I’m here now. There are birds of prey, it’s quiet, you can hear running water.”
“It really fascinated me because I can’t imagine how terrible this landscape looked.
“They (the industrial remains) look almost like follies or have been almost picturesquely designed by nature, and that is obviously part of the idea of the project. It is strange to see how quickly trees and bushes and such can destroy stone walls.”
Jon now plans to extend the project further into North Wales, having been commissioned to work with young people in the Blaenau Ffestiniog area to reflect on the landscape.
He will also be involved in an academic project documenting the Port Talbot steelworks and examining the impact that the cessation of work in a region has on the local population.
“Port Talbot is unfortunately the last bastion of this dying species, and what is left of it?” he asks.
“Unfortunately, not very much.”
