In the voices of its people, the amazing story of a Valley that fuelled the world.

Tales of one-armed colliers, the blitz in Cwmparc, how to build a gambo, how they saved the Park and Dare Theatre, the hat that saved a sailor, the grandmother who fought for pit-head baths, camaraderie underground, and magical underwater cattle…

It’s a mining metropolis bursting with character and colour.

Passion and poetry, sporting heroes, world-class libraries and choirs, bibles hiding entire family histories, family dogs expanding horizons, a croeso for refugees, a creature from 250 million years ago, and a long-forgotten diary of a Mid-Rhondda miners’ strike…

This is a celebration of a community that’s seen dark days and tough times, but has lived through it all with its spirit, its humour and its sense of fair play undimmed.

The place on Mars named after a Rhondda town, the Treorchy schoolteacher who lifted the Rugby World Cup, the shopper who’s owed a pound by Tom Jones, the Ystrad crocodile, the singer who married James Bond and the one who fell in love with a mountain…

All this – and much more – is gathered and available to you here. Enjoy!

The Rhondda Heritage Project is the fruit of a major grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund awarded to Rhondda Radio, the Valley’s community radio station.

The Project has three interlinking strands:

• a Heritage Trail reconnecting this iconic mining community to its past, organised thematically with ‘Heritage Stations’ at historic locations throughout both Rhondda Valleys
• storytelling workshops upskilling volunteers to identify and record oral testimony related to Rhondda’s history
• and a year-long ‘festival’ of Heritage Programmes broadcast by Rhondda Radio in 2024, and available online in perpetuity.

The storytelling workshops, open to the public, were held at Treorchy Rugby Club in autumn 2023. Workshops were also held at Ysgol Nantgwyn, Tonypandy; at Coleg y Cymoedd; and at the Factory in Porth with members of Radio Platfform, Wales’s only youth-led radio station. Participants recorded their stories – in the main – on their own mobile phones. They have subsequently been broadcast on Rhondda Radio, and are now available here.

Rhondda Radio is a not-for-profit trust run by volunteers which broadcasts an all-day service of news and information, entertainment and features over the airwaves in the Valley and online worldwide.

The Rhondda Heritage Project was delivered under the creative direction of John Geraint, one of Wales’ most experienced documentary-makers, and the author of Up The Rhondda! and The Great Welsh Auntie Novel, two books about his Rhondda heritage.

For more about Rhondda Radio, your community station: http://www.rhonddaradio.com/

You can listen to episodes of the Rhondda Heritage Hour on demand here: http://www.mixcloud.com/RhonddaRadio123