Nantyglo Round Towers are located at Roundhouse Farm, Nantyglo near Brynmawr in the borough of Blaenau Gwent in the South Wales Valleys. The two fortified towers were constructed in 1816 during the period of national unrest due to high wheat prices following the end of the Napoleonic wars, by the ironmasters Matthew Wayne (1780–1853) and Joseph Bailey, beside Nantyglo House or Ty Mawr as barracks for the militia and places of retreat.
They are believed to be the last fortifications of their type built in Britain. One of the towers remains intact today whilst the other is ruinous having been partly demolished in a search for scrap iron in the 1940s. Neither is open to the public though they can be viewed from nearby.[1]
An independent band of iron miners was brought from Wellington Shropshire for the open-cast iron mine beside the towers then called Caban Gwyn. Some lived in houses with their own chapel at Penywain up the top of (now) Pond Road behind Brynawelon and overlooking Nantyglo, the ironworks, the towers and Ty Mawr. Those houses' view of the towers and Ty Mawr is now obscured by a heap of mid 19th century spoil. Beneath the mine tunnels were constructed linking the houses, the towers, and Ty Mawr.
