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Wern Iron Foundry & Smithy

Established by William Yalden in 1784

Richard Nevill & Co. Ltd.

1784 William Yalden opened an iron foundry and smithy in the Wern district to make and repair machinery for iron works and collieries in the Llanelli area. William and his wife Ann came from Lovington in the County of Hampshire. The Yaldens were also said to have held a position of wealth and influence in the town but the second generation, experiencing a reverse in fortune, decided to move away from Llanelli and establish themselves at Penderi near Llandeilo.

1830-1831 Yalden & Co. were listed in Pigot’s Directory.

1835 Yalden & David were listed as one of the main Iron Founders in Pigot's Directory of 1835

1844 Pigot’s Directory shows that Richard Nevill (junior) had taken over Yalden & David’s Wern Foundry.

1812 Richard Janion Nevill, son of Charles Nevill, who had come to Llanelli to establish a Copperworks, married Yalden’s daughter, Anne and the union led to a business partnership that was to last until 1842.

1842 Management of the Foundry was taken over by the Nevill brothers, who continued to run the business for 80 years. Richard Nevill (son of Richard Janion Nevill), is described as having had excellent administrative and engineering skills, and became manager of the Foundry. He is said to have laid the foundations for a successful engineering enterprise that traded at home and abroad.

1922 Richard Thomas & Company acquired Richard Nevill & Co Ltd and the works was considerably enlarged and equipped with the most up-to-date plant throughout. The firm specialised in manufacturing plant and equipment for steel, sheet and tinplate works and was involved in major contracts in Wales, including the construction of the complete tinning plant for the Ebbw Vale Strip Mill. Contracts involved the manufacture and installation of rolling mill engines in Norway, Spain, Italy and other foreign parts.

1940 Nevill’s Foundry was particularly busy during the Second World War, making parts that were sent to other works all over the country. The Foundry also made castings for bombs, gun turrets and fittings for armoured tanks.

1952 The 4½ acres site at the Wern, was considered to be unsuitable, being situated in a mainly residential area. The site had seven separate entrances, and was split by a railway, with the constructional shop, roll turning, roll foundry and iron foundry, on one side of the railway line and the pattern shop, steel fettling, steel foundry, fitting shop and blacksmith’s shop, on the other side, neighbouring Ann Street.

The railway track supplied the Foundry with scrap and imported Belgian steel plates which had been unloaded at Nevill’s Dock. From the Dock track wound through the streets at Seaside, crossed the square at Station Road, continued with the Western Works on one side and Old Lodge Tinplate Works on the other before passing through a lane, to reach its terminus at the back of the town’s gasworks.

1985 The Engineering Works at Machynys, which could trace its ancestry back to the Iron Foundry and Engineering Works, originally established by William Yalden, in 1784, was closed by the British Steel Corporation in 1985.