Rhondda

The district of Rhondda' (pronounced Ron-tha), generally referred to as the Rhondda', consists of two urbanised valleys in Glamorgan, on the south Wales coalfield. The two valleys are the Rhondda Fach, 'Little Rhondda', and Rhondda Fawr, 'Great Rhondda', which meet at the village of Porth, from where the Rhondda River flows on to the town of Pontypridd.

Both valleys, formerly renowned for their natural beauty and wooded hillsides, were built up from the mid nineteenth century to exploit the steam coal measures which lay beneath; the mining villages merged into each other to form two lines of ribbon development several miles in length (an urban form common to most of the mining valleys of south Wales). The Rhondda was known for industrial militancy, and the action by [[Winston Churchill] of sending troops to the area in 1911 to police a miners' strike is recalled in local folklore and labour history alike. The Rhondda suffered very badly from unemployment as demand for coal fell in the 1920s and the Depression, and the population fell from a peak of tbc