Feel Wales’s Industrial Muscle

Kidwelly Industrial Museum closed in 2017 and the care of the site has returned over time to the landowner, Carmarthenshire County Council.

During 2022-2023, expansive surveys were completed to provide a snapshot of the condition of the listed museum properties and scheduled structures. Other works carried out at the same time included a collection review and preliminary ecological assessment. From these, a draft options appraisal has been prepared that considers the implication of options from the impact on society and historic preservation, to the economy and the environment.

A timeline of when the report is going to various meetings for consideration is being agreed. A steer from Cabinet is anticipated by the end of 2024, which will inform what the next steps will be.

The museum preserves what was one of Britain's first tinplate works and is now the oldest tinplate works to be found anywhere in Europe. Because it survives, the old works has a special place in the story of Britain's Industrial Revolution. Nearly half of the world’s tinplate was manufactured in Wales in the 19th century, much of it in Carmarthenshire.

Tinplate was the plastic of its day and used for a large range of ordinary products. These included children’s toys, baths, food containers and kitchenware. Llanelli-made pots and pans supplied Captain Robert Falcon Scott's final, fatal expedition to the Antarctic in 1910 -1912.

Tinplate manufacture started at Kidwelly in 1737 on the site of an earlier iron forge and continued until 1941. From small beginnings the works expanded through the 19th century to become the largest employer in the Kidwelly area. In 1881 there were 252 men and boys and 35 women working there, many of them born locally. But the industry's expansion also attracted new people and led to the growth of the town.

The museum interprets the packmill process, where bars of wrought iron were brought by train and then transformed by steam, heavy machinery, heat and chemical processes into tinned sheets. Heavy boxes of sheets were transported to stamping works where they were pressed into products, many of which were then enamelled. British tinplate goods were exported world-wide.