Volume Six - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - Select Aspects - Acts and disputes . . .

Where do I begin? Excepting aborted proposals for docks the following sequence provides a framework of the development of shipping facilities at Penarth.

1836 - The Act of Incorporation of the Taff Vale Railway Company in June, prescribed the “making a railway from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff” which subject to some controls permitted another “Branch to or near Cogan Pill on the west bank of the River Ely; on the lands of the late Earl of Plymouth; and to terminate at or near Penarth Head”. Also, in the same bill; “to make and construct a certain wet dock or wet docks, for the convenience of shipping, with all proper approaches, piers, jetties, wharfs, sluices, locks, staithes, warehouses, and other works connected therewith, such dock or docks to be situate at or near the termination of the said branch railway, at or near Penarth Head”.

This Act authorised the construction of the first public railway of significance in Wales with the objective of the efficient transportation of minerals and iron produce to the sea ports and harbours for shipment. By this time the Glamorganshire Canal was decidedly overcrowded and had become ineffective. The TVR railway was completed and opened from the iron works at Merthyr to the Bute Docks at Cardiff in 1841. Several branch lines connected the system to selected collieries along the way. Cardiff Docks were owned by the second Marquis of Bute.

1838 - Lord Bute v. the Taff Vale Railway Company. The Mining Journal [193] of Saturday 30th June 1838 ran a report of the dispute between the Bute empire and the TVR:

“On Monday and Tuesday week, some cases for compensation were decided before J. G. Jeffreys, Esq., deputy sheriff; others, the parties arranged among themselves; and on Wednesday, that of Lord Bute v. the Taff Vale Railway Company was heard at the Town Hall, Cardiff.

Mr. Maule, Q.C., addressed the jury for the noble claimant, requiring compensation for divers injuries, amounting to between £16,000 and £17,000 and upwards. The chief point on which he rested his claim was with regard to a small piece of wood and pasture land at Cogan Pill (near Penarth), asserting that such ought not to be estimated merely with regard to its agricultural capabilities, but to its being so located as to present a frontage to the River Ely, affording a most convenient and well-adapted place for wharfs, quays, &c., and altogether forming a situation for commercial purposes rarely to be met with.