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Please click here to be taken to the website of the Barry Historical Society
Barry, as we now see it, only really began to grow with the building of the docks in 1884. However, people had been living in this part of South Wales long before that, as Bronze Age burial mounds, found at Cold Knap and Friars Point, proves. In later years the Romans took an interest in the area and at the Knap they built what is thought to have been a supply depot for their Bristol Channel Fleet.
The name of Barry derives from St. Baruc who was drowned in the Bristol Channel and buried in Barry Island. The ruins of the chapel that was dedicated to him can be seen in Friars Road. Cadoxton, too, takes its name from an early saint, St. Cadoc, and it is around the medieval church of St. Cadoc that the old village grew up. The church still survives, as do some of the older village houses.
Those early years were troubled ones, with constant Viking raids making life difficult. Barry Island, for example, was known to be a raider' base in 1087. Soon after this date the Normans arrived to divide the lands of the Vale of Glamorgan into manors and parishes. Barry became a sub-manor to Penmark and by the 12th-13th centuries had grown into a village and port with its own church, water mill and castle. Fragments of the latter dating from 13th & 14th centuries can be seen on the hill above Romilly Park. In the gateway are grooves for a portcullis and there is evidence of a drawbridgeThe Black Death' in the 14th century almost finished Barry, and it was not until the 17th Century before the population recovered sufficiently to be once again termed a village. The port became active once more, with local ships trading as far a field as France.
The 19th Century, of course, brought enormous changes to South Wales with the extensive mining of coal and iron in the valleys to the north of the vale. Barry and the coast around it, however, remained rural until well into the second half of that century. The Romilly family bought the estate and was responsible for new building but Barry was still only a village in the 1860's and Barry Island was still referred to as a place that abounded with rabbits!
Things, however, were to change dramatically, and Barry and Cadoxton were to develop in leaps and bounds. The ever-growing coal trade was far outstripping the facilities at Cardiff Docks and so a group of colliery owners formed the Barry Railway Company and chose to build the dock at Barry. Work commenced in 1884 and the first dock basin was opened in 1889 to be followed by two other docks and extensive port installations. The Barry Railway brought coal down from the valleys to the new docks whose trade grew from one million tons in the first year to over nine million toils by 1903. The port was crowded with ships and had flourishing ship repair yards, cold stores, flour mills and an ice factory. By 1913 Barry had become the largest coal exporting port in the world.
Behind the docks rose the terraced houses of Barry, which, with Cadoxton, soon formed a sizeable town. The railways, which had played a major part in the development of the dock, did a great deal too to make Barry Island the popular resort it is today. Excursion trains brought thousands of people down from the valleys and, from the railway pier, the paddleboats plied along the coast and across the Bristol Channel.
Barry had grown into an important and large town, and in 1939 it was made a borough an independence that, although changed at the major reorganisation of 1974 and 1994 is still reflected in the Town Council of today.
Text provided by the Barry Town Council Website. |
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