Cefn Golau Cholera Cemetery is situated on a narrow mountain ridge in the county borough of Blaenau Gwent, between Rhymney and Tredegar in South East Wales. The Welsh name Cefn Golau means 'hill of light'.
Cefn Golau is also the name of four nearby places. Two of them are cemeteries: a modern one, which is maintained by the local authority – Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council – and its disused predecessor, the original cemetery of the town. The other two places are an adjacent leat and, below it, a suburb of the town.
The graves in the cholera cemetery date from the three outbreaks of Asiatic cholera which occurred in 1832–1833, 1849–1850, and 1866.See also History of cholera. The cemetery is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is protected by law.Tredegar Ironworks Cholera Cemetery;Cefn Golau Cholera Cemetery. According to one estimate, the total number of people buried "may number between 200 and 600".
The cemetery is the only surviving cholera cemetery in South Wales and is one of the few such cemeteries that remain in Britain. In a 2022 lecture, Richard C. Keller, Professor of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, identified this cemetery, along with Duffy's Cut in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Cholera Monument in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, as examples of "a handful of memorial plaques [sic] designating mass burial sites of cholera victims from the nineteenth century".Memorializing Death in an Age of Mass Mortality: Keywords of Covid-19. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
The epidemiology of cholera Cholera is a water-borne disease. However, in the first half of the nineteenth century, there were two alternative and competing theories about the cause of it, contagionism and miasmatism. American author Steven Johnson explained the theories as follows: "Either cholera was some kind of agent that passed from person to person, like the flu, or it somehow lingered in the 'miasma' of unsanitary spaces." Whichever theory about the cause of cholera prevailed in Tredegar at the start of the first outbreak in the town in 1832, insufficient attention was paid to the provision of adequate sanitation for its inhabitants. For example, local historian Oliver Jones (1969) observed that, in the 1820s: Yet, in contrast, scholar-priest E. T. Davies observed: "although in the area generally, thousands of families lived in very bad conditions, there was general agreement that the interior of their houses were kept clean in spite of adverse conditions."
The three epidemics in Tredegar Tredegar experienced three cholera epidemics during the nineteenth century: 1832–1833, 1849–1850, and 1866. All were local outbreaks of three international pandemics – 1826–1837, 1846–1860, and 1863–1875 – which entered Britain. The first epidemic arrived in October 1831 in Sunderland, brought by passengers on a ship that had come from the Baltic. Hempel (2007) documented that the second epidemic entered in September 1848 in South London, brought by a merchant seaman who had arrived from Hamburg. The third epidemic entered in June 1866 in East London and was traced to the water supplied by the East London Waterworks Company.The evidence about this outbreak proved crucial in the eventual acceptance of the theory that cholera is a water‑borne disease; see .
1832-33 The 1832–1833 cholera epidemic was the first to occur in Tredegar. The disease arrived in Newport in June 1832 and in the following month in Swansea from the Mary Ann, a ship that had previously sailed from Calcutta, where an outbreak of 'cholera morbus' had occurred.
Local historian W.J. Probert documented that the first person who died in the town was Wm. Thomas, a wheelwright and a native of Swansea, who died on the 20th of October 1832. Thirty-five local residents, nineteen males and seventeen females, died in quick succession from the 10th of November to the 19th of January of the following year.Probert wrote that he had obtained the information from an entry in the Bedwellty parish burial register which was headed 'Register of persons who died of cholera and were buried near Tredegar Iron Works in this parish'. However, this was not the final toll. Probert also documented that other victims were "taken away by night to be buried by their friends".Probert stated under this information: "Received this account from Joseph Thom. Grave Digger in 1835. Thos Ellis [sic] This was copied from Thos. Ellis account by me: W. Morgan, P. Clerk, in March 1841". Jones (1969) observed that the outbreak:
1849-50 The 1849–1850 epidemic was the second to occur and was much more serious than its predecessor. The disease had already struck neighbouring Rhymney in July 1849 and Nantyglo in August 1849 before it reached the town. Two counts of deaths were cited. According to the renowned physician Charles Creighton (1894), 157 deaths occurred during May 1849, while according to Jones (1958), 203 deaths occurred.
As the number of victims increased, scarcely a street in the town remained unaffected. The doctors searched for remedies without success; people left their homes and fled into the countryside, while others stayed indoors. Many sought help from their religion, and the chapels were packed, but the death toll still mounted. People could appear to be fit in the morning and be dead by evening. The disease caused so much fear that few people were willing to help bury the victims. With the arrival of colder and wetter weather in the autumn, the number of new infections gradually dwindled.
1866 In contrast to the previous two epidemics, the 1866 epidemic originated in the Middle East.This and the following information about the epidemic is from . A doubtful case of the disease occurred in late May in Swansea, which prompted The Merthyr Telegraph to ask, "Is the Cholera Coming?" Its question was answered later in the summer when, as Jones (1958) documented, "the disease again made havoc in the industrial districts of South Wales." Two counts of deaths were cited. In 1866, the Bedwellty Registrar District reported that the number of deaths from the disease was 122. In 1868, the Registrar‑General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England reported that the number of deaths from the disease was 101. He commented that "Sirhowy [is] supplied with water from wells and surface water; the surface water may be liable to contamination. Tredegar is supplied with water from the Tredegar Waterworks."
The headstones The burial ground on its remote, windswept site was abandoned a long time ago. However, a few gravestones still stand in the sheep‑nibbled turf. Some headstones in the cemetery date from 1832. They are small, with boldly cut scripts and elegant floral designs. In contrast, the headstones from the 1849 outbreak are much larger and more numerous, with most of the deaths dating from August and September, when the epidemic was at its peak. There is one stone from the 1866 outbreak.
Jones (1969) documented that the headstones "describe the victims of the 1832 and 1848 epidemics as 'natives of the Tredegar Iron Works' and as late as the 1860s letters were still being addressed, for example, to 'Mr. John Lewis, East Lane, Tredegar Iron Works.'"Contributions by three Welsh historians enable an understanding of this issue. First, (originally 1884) observed that "postal accommodations' at the start of the 19th century 'were in a backward state": letters were "left at the Company shop, and placed in the windows, 'until called for,' or if delivered, 6d. extra." Second, opined that the town did not have – or was not allowed "to have – an identity apart from the industry that sustained it." Third, credited the historian Dr Sian Rhiannon Williams with having identified in her 1985 PhD thesis that the name Tredegar Iron Works was initially used for its postal address but then came to be used as the postal address of "not only the works but also of the surrounding community". An example is the headstone that was erected for William Thomas (see above), the first stone to be erected in the cemetery, which reads:
One headstone is a memorial to Thomas James, who died on 18 August 1849, aged 24 years. The inscription on it reads:
Some of the inscriptions on the gravestones are in English, others in Welsh and some are in a mixture of the two languages.
The aftermath Jones (1988) observed that the Bedwellty Board of Guardians was appointed in 1849 "with responsibility for administering medical relief" and that the "Tredegar Company drew the attention of the Guardians to the filthy state of the town and suggested that an Inspector of Nuisances [a forerunner of an Environmental health officer] be appointed." In 1866, an area health board was established, partly because of a government order and because another outbreak of cholera was feared. Also, in an early undertaking of public health, the Bedwellty Guardians co‑opted three doctors to undertake house‑to‑house inspections, and the local police superintendent was appointed as the part‑time Inspector of Nuisances, with the power to prosecute householders who failed to dispose of their refuse suitably.
In 1874, these public health undertakings were followed by the creation of the Health and Education Fund by the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company, one of the several local health schemes some of which combined to form the Tredegar Medical Aid Society. However, as Ray EarwickerEarwicker was a senior member of the Health Inequalities Unit, in the Department of Health (see Tackling Health Inequalities: 2005-07 Policy and Data Update for the 2010 National Target) (). (1980) observed:
Notes
References
External links Coflein - Tredegar Ironworks Cholera Cemetery;Cefn Golau Cholera Cemetery