Jackson's Bridge, Merthyr

“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”
Lao Tzu
A Walk Through Merthyr
We pass by the border with ‘China’, a district from nineteenth century Merthyr Tydfil – no Chinese inhabitants but ruled by an Emperor according to the newspapers; reputedly the most notorious district for crime in Wales, variously described as a no-go area, a centre of depravity and a den of drunkards, thieves, rogues etc, frequently featuring in the police reports in the local newspapers of the time. Strangers entered ‘China’ at their peril, through an arch which was easily controlled by the occupants, lucky to escape with the clothes on their backs; even the police gave the ‘Forbidden City’ a wide berth it was claimed. A reputation perhaps borne more of lurid newspaper storytelling than factual reporting, but an absorbing story nevertheless, and if you ever get the chance to hear Merthyr historian Chris Parry tell his version prepare to be similarly spellbound. It was undoubtedly a poor area, a compact ghetto of slum dwellings without water or sanitation thrown up in the frenzy of industrial development. It seems it was richer pickings to the south that precipitated it’s decline, and eventual demolition and redevelopment in the early twentieth century. From the boundary with ‘China’ the walk passed over Jackson’s Bridge, an eighteenth-century stone bridge which once carried the Dowlais Ironworks Tramroad over the river Taff to the Glamorganshire Canal.