Villagers fight to keep their slag-heap: archive, 4 February 1957

4 February 1957: Cherished by locals, the amenity in Glamorganshire is said to be a product of far-sighted planning and silvicultural experimentation

Slag-heaps, as spoil-tips of all kinds are commonly miscalled, give endless trouble to planning authorities, national and local. The creation of a new one, for instance, requires planning permission, and is almost invariably opposed by amenity societies. But a new kind of trouble has arisen in Glamorganshire over a slag-heap (and this one really is a slag-heap) near Ysguborwen Bridge: the local residents are up in arms - in the name of amenity - because somebody is carting it away.

Glamorganshire people are traditionally awkward customers. Legend has it that when, in the years of depression, Cwm Rhondda's spoil-tips were shovelled away to make work for the unemployed local residents complained of the draught. But there is nothing perverse about the campaign to save the tip at Ysguborwen Bridge, for it is covered with majestic elms, sycamores, and silver birches 50 to 70 feet high - a fine sight even in a January thunderstorm and a favourite resort for picnic parties when clothed in all the glory of its summer foliage. Moreover, it screens from public view the ugly spoil-tips of the River Level Colliery and a lot of unsightly opencast mining operations.