Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - A History of Penarth Dock by Roy Thorne . . .

When travellers sheltered at the Penarth Head Inn during the 18th and 19th centuries and saw small sailing vessels sheltering at Penarth Roads or moving up the Taff to Cardiff Quay for dairy produce to be taken to Bristol they were not to know that in the latter part of the 19th century, the Bute Dock Company would improve the Taff Cut to give better access to the docks at Cardiff, and that the Taff Vale Railway Company would improve the Ely Cut to give a better approach to Penarth Dock.

At the north of Glamorgan and Gwent the great industrial expansion lacked one important factor. The area was remote from the seaboard. There were no canals or railways in the valleys leading to Cardiff.

During the 18th century the products of the furnaces and forges were taken from Merthyr to Cardiff on the backs of horses or mules. The cost of this twenty five mile journey was high and the method slow. In 1767 a road was constructed to carry wheeled traffic down the Taff valley from Merthyr to the Town Quay at Cardiff. This was cheaper and quicker, but then a canal project was mooted. The geographical conditions initially rendered this idea impracticable, but as the technique of canal building improved then the canal became a practicable concept.

In 1790 a meeting of iron masters at Merthyr pressed for the need for a canal and the Parliamentary Bill became an Act that year. The promoting body was known as, "The Company of Proprietors of the Glamorganshire Canal Navigation" and included amongst the 77 separate individuals and companies were the Guests of Dowlais, Homfrays of Pendarren, Crawshays of Cyfartha, Hills of Plymouth and Lord Cardiff.

The first part of the canal which joined Abercynon to Cardiff was opened in 1794. The Cardiff terminus was then at "The Bank" which was at a point where the canal and the river were nearest to one another about 5 to 6 furlongs south of Custom House Street in today's Butetown. [O’Rourke's map of Cardiff of 1849, [1157] shows the space between the canal and river at the point named "The Ballast Bank."]

By 1798 a sea lock had been constructed a mile and a half south of Cardiff which could take vessels of up to two hundred tons, and the Abercynon to Merthyr portion completed. This linked Cardiff with the expanding iron industry of Merthyr and iron, rather than dairy products, became the mainstay of the port. Its entrance was two and a quarter miles from low water mark, up a winding channel through mud flats.