A Wisdom Archive on bridgend - castles and foundation

The town has three castles nearby: Coity Castle, in the village of Coity approximately two miles from the centre; Ogmore Castle on the outskirts of the village of Ogmore approximately seven miles from Bridgend; and Newcastle which is at the top of Newcastle Hill overlooking Bridgend. Together these three castles formed a defensive triangle from the coast to Coity. Bridgend itself developed at a ford on the River Ogmore, which was on the main route between East and West Wales. Just north of the town, there is the confluence of three ri ...

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Bridgend (Welsh: Pen-y-bont) is a town in the traditional county of Glamorgan and the main town in the county borough of Bridgend. Bridgend is in South Wales, roughly midway between the principal cities Cardiff and Swansea. The river crossed by the original bridge which gave the town its name is the River Ogmore but the River Ewenny also passes through the south of the town. Bridgend has greatly expanded in size since the early 1980s and now has a population of around 40,000. Bridgend - Castles and foundati ... Including:

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• Bridgend - Coal and industry
• Bridgend - The Second World War and Bridgend
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Bridgend has its own commercial radio station: 106.3 Bridge FM. Bridgend is twinned with Langenau, Germany and Villenave D'Ornon, France. Bridgend hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1948 and 1998. Bridgend Rugby Football club play at the Brewery Field (so called because there was a Brewery near the site.) As part of the provincialisation of Welsh rugby which took place in 2003, they joined with Pontypridd RFC to form the Celtic Warriors. However, due to several factors, the club folded after just one season, leaving the a ...

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Bridgend played an important part during the Second World War. It was it home to a Prisoner of War Camp at Island Farm and a large munitions factory (ROF Bridgend — known as the Admirality) at Waterton, as well as a large underground munitions storage base at Brackla (known as the 8 x's). This was an overspill of the Royal Arsenal,Woolwich. At its peak the Arsenal had 40000 workers, many of them women. Large numbers of them were bussed in from the Rhondda and the valleys. At the time the A ...

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The first coal mines opened in the valleys north of Bridgend in the seventeenth century, with the Llynfi valley being the first to be industrialised. Bridgend itself never had coal and remained a market town for some time, but the valleys of the three rivers grew into an important part of the south Wales coalfields. Ironworks and brickworks were also established in the same period, by John Bedford, although the ironworks faltered after hi ...

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Further new housing developments at Broadlands (near Newbridge Fields) and the never ending expansion of Brackla have caused Bridgend's population to swell dramatically. Traffic became a real problem in the archaic town centre, in 1997 a new linkroad/bypass was built to link the town centre directly to the M4 motorway as well as redirect traffic around the town centre. The local council started a scheme to pedestrianise the town centre. This has been met with criticism by the traders and shoppers alike because of poor construction, po ...

Read more here: » Bridgend: Encyclopedia II - Bridgend - Modern Bridgend and the future