Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Nobel Industries Ltd. (This company, which operated from 1920 to 1926, owned two important explosives works in Wales: Glynneath Gunpowder Works at the head of the Vale of Neath, now open to the public by the Brecon Beacons National Park; and Pembrey Explosives Works, Carmarthenshire, now open to the public as a local authority owned country park. In 1857 the Vale of Neath Powder Company opened Gynnneath Gunpowder Works on an extensive 180 acre site using water power to manufacture explosives for the south Wales mining and quarrying industries using imported sulphur and saltpetre, and locally manufactured charcoal. In 1862/63 the company was acquired by major English gunpowder manufacturer Curtis’s & Harvey Ltd, which owned the works until 1918 when it, Nobel's Explosives Company Ltd and 28 other companies merged to form Explosives Trades Ltd which was renamed Nobel Industries Ltd in 1920. On the creation of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd in 1926 by the amalgamation of Nobel Industries Ltd with three other major chemical companies, the works passed to ICI which closed it in 1931 when the use of gunpowder ceased to be permitted in coal mines. The site was used for explosives storage until 1940 and then demolished. Pembrey Burrows had been the site of a dynamite works from 1881 to the late 1890s, and was owned by the Nobel-Dynamite Trust Ltd from 1887/88. Nobels still owned the site at the start of the First World War and in 1915 built a major works for the manufacture of military explosives, far larger than the old works. The Nobel Trust was broken up by the Government in 1915 because the Trust was partly German-owned and the works passed to Nobel Industries Ltd, the English successor company. In 1918 Nobels became a founder constituent of Explosives Trades Ltd (see above), renamed Nobel Industries Limited in 1920. Production ceased in 1918, and the works was owned and maintained by Nobels until it was sold for scrap in 1926 when Nobels became a founder constituent of ICI (see above).)