Volume One - Into the Victorian Age - A concise history of Penarth Dock and the coal trade . . .

left : 1857 : An advertisement To Contractors published within a number of local newspapers. [361]   The story of the first years of the Ely Tidal Harbour and Penarth Dock are summarised in the following article : -

'The story of the construction of the dock, and how the Taff Vale Company obtained the management of it in spite of the efforts of Lord Bute to prevent competition with the Cardiff Docks, forms a very interesting chapter in the commercial history of South Wales. Penarth Head is within a mile of Cardiff at the mouth of the river Ely. Six years after Lord Bute obtained powers to construct the West Bute Dock, the Taff Vale Railway Company was formed, and obtained powers to construct a railway from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff. This was to be a branch line running to Cogan Pill, where later on the Penarth Dock was constructed. But to prevent possible competition Lord Bute approached the Taff Vale directors, and a compromise was arranged. Under this agreement Lord Bute gave the Taff Vale Company access to the West Bute Dock, on condition that the Company should run their system into the Dock, and lease a considerable section of the quay accommodation there. In return for this concession, the Company was to abandon its projected branch line to Cogan Pill, and the railway company bound itself to arrange that all goods for shipment carried over its system should be either shipped from the West Bute Dock, or dues should be paid on them as though they had been so shipped. But when in the year 1855 Lord Bute constructed the East Bute Dock, there was considerable friction between him and the Taff Vale Company, because he refused to give the Company the same facilities as it enjoyed at the older dock — these facilities being accorded to the Rhymney Railway Company, which had just been incorporated. For eleven years the Taff Vale Company waited before it obtained equal treatment at the new dock.