12/07/2026
✨ Celebrating Pontypridds Landscape of Culture ✨
Here at Tir Pontypridd we were very pleased to hear this weeks news that Pontypridd has been shortlisted as one of 15 towns, out of 398 UK wide applicants in the competition to be the UKs first 'Town of Culture'.
Woohoo! This is a phenomenal achievement, and we take our hats off to all those those who have been involved in shaping and writing this bid. We greatly appreciate the amount of work that's gone into this.
As part of the process Tir Pontypridd attended a community engagement event at Pontypridd Museum and talked about how our landscape shapes our towns culture, and who we are as residents too.
Our local landscape has been helping to shape and define our culture for thousands of years. We can trace the origins of this influence to bronze age religious monuments of people who grazed their livestock here.
During the early medieval period religious settlements were founded near Pontypridd e.g. at Llanwono, to cater to the religious needs of the pastoral farmers who lived and farmed the landscape of this area.
This landscape shaped the farming that could be practiced, tending more towards livestock in the uplands, than arable along the coast. Our relationship with this lanscape gave our places meaning.
The older place names which make up our town of Pontypridd today e.g. Gelliwasted, Maesycoed, Y Graig, Treforest, Cilfynydd etc stem from our ancient relationship with the land where we live today.
A relationship which was understood yn Gymraeg gave rise to a rich local folklore of stories, poetry, and song, the majority of which were shared verbally, not written down, and are largely lost to us today.
The town of Pontypridd was founded during the industrial revolution, taking its name from the new bridge built to ford the River Taff. A wonder built of stone and mortar, by an earthen house.
A bridge, like the town, built from the land.
The land continued to give rise to the rapidly growing town through the food grown around it, the building materials quarried, and the minerals and coal mined from below, that fed the new industries.
And a new culture began to emerge, a coming together of an older culture, and a new. Influences from far flung places mixed into a melting pot that helped give rise to our towns culture and identity today.
The artists and creatives of the era were inspired anew by the land they'd come to call home. In charcoal, inks and paints, in words and songs of bread and heaven, they created and inspired and held eisteddfodiau.
And so our town continued to grow from the land in which it sits, at the confluence of the Rhondda & the Taff, which flow through it, incorporating our landscape into our very essence as a town.
Today we continue to value, love and celebrate the town we call home. We decry the despoilation and destruction of special places like Craig-Yr-Hesg, we mourn the loss when we're excluded from our land.
If our relationship with the land which gave rise to, and shaped who we are suffers then we as a people feel that suffering too. Hunger, poverty and fuel poverty in a town whose landscape is rich in natural resources.
Our current relationship with the land that gave rise to our culture is a measure of ourselves as a people.
As we look ahead to the prospect of the winning town receiving £3 million "to deliver an ambitious cultural programme in 2028 and place Pontypridd firmly on the UK’s cultural map", what role will our landscape play?
Can we seize the opportunity to reconnect, and reclaim our ancient relationship with the land around our town for our future? A land which once sustained us, and which we in our urn can help sustain.
At Tir Pontypridd we are already raising funds to purchase land in and around where we live, so that we may begin to do so. We have no idea if, or how, we may succeed, but we're giving it a go.
Our town has grown through history from people who rolled up their sleeves and gave it a go. We don't know what cultural influences might emerge from this, but unless we try, then we'll never know.
Diolch to all involved ❤️
Read about the Pontypridd Town of Culture Here 👉 https://orlo.uk/8hEI7
Read about Tir Pontypridd Here: https://www.tirpontypridd.org
Read about our current Crowdfunder here:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/tir-pontypridd
