WELSH MOVING MOUNTAIN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 10 March 1925, Page 9

WELSH MOVING MOUNTAIN.

WATER CUT OFF FROM 12.000 PEOPLE. TILTING HOUSES AND FALLING ROADS. Troedrhiwfnwch, like all Welsh mountain villages, is ' principally one big street, providing homes for the miners employed at the New Tredegar pits just across* the valley on the Monmouthshire side. '' Imperceptibly but surely the mountain is pushing Troedrhiwfuweh into the valley. Roads have suddenly subsided and cracks in walls and houses have widened and lengthened, while in the mountain itself, prone and bare, overshadowing the whole of the valley, there are now great fissures into which it is reported that sheep and ponies grazing on the hillside disappear and are never seen, again. > The movement of the mountain at Troedrhiwfuweh, near Bargoed, Glamorgan, which has been going on foi - ' years, showed increased activity during the week-end. On Friday the mains carrying the water supply for about 120,000 people in the Rhymney Valley were broken. The water was for a time cut off, hut repair squads working all through the* night were able to restore the supply. During the last few days railway lines have been forced out of. alignment. Serious damage to the Rhymney Railway has inade necessary the construction of special retaining walls 'at Tirphil. Concrete buttresses are being built.

There is hardly a house in the village that has not been affected by “the pressure,” as the villagers call it. In many it is impossible to open the doors to full width; in others the windows are all askew and broken. Replacing is out o.f the question; the neverceasing pressure splinters the glass al- ! most as soon as it is put in. This is what has been attributed to “the pressure” during recent weeks: Derailing pf goods train at Tirphil; trucks precipitated into river 40ft below ; fireman and "driver killed. Fracture of compressed air mains, causing two or three pits to close down and putting 5000 men out of work for two days. Destruction of a section of a new sewage scheme for the valley just completed. Serious damage to the Rhymuev rail-

way. necessitating the construction of special retaining walls at Tirphil. SCORES OF SHEEP LOST. The story of “the pressure” is best told by Mr Watkin B. Moses, the local farmer who has grazed his flocks on Troedrhiwfuweh Mountain for 30 years and more. He said to-day that there are Assures in the mountain top 12 feet wide and SO yards long.

“I was up there yesterday,” he said, “and so I know. I have lost scores of sheep down these cracks. At one time we used to try and save them, and I have been lowered down 20ft or so in an effort to get at them, hut the crack bends in and out, and you can’t get down, so now when a sheep falls in we heave stones down to kill it and so put it out of its misery. “Once the Talybont Hunt came up over the mountain after a fox. The fox stood at bay on the edge of a crack, hut one of the hounds fell in, and the master said he would never hunt the mountain again. A pony fell down one dav. and was never seen again. “Look at this farmhouse. There are

cracks everywhere, and soon we shall he pushed over the edge and across the vallev into Monmouthshire. It is at night we hear the movement. When we are in bed and everything is still wo hear the stones cracking.” .Other villagers told the same storv, and, as Mrs William Lewis added, “It is not much use taking-any notice; besides, there is nowhere else to go, and we are used to it now.” Engineers declare that the movement is a result of the mining which has taken place right up the valley. Thus has caused subsidences and the onening of fissures in the mountain. These fissures during the recent abnormal rain have been filled with thousands of tons of water, and this lias accounted for the recent marked activitv of the mountain.