Bedlinog

Bedlinog is a small village located in the Taff Bargoed Valley 10 km north of Pontypridd, 10 km north west of Caerphilly and 10 km south east of Merthyr Tydfil in south-east Wales. It is currently in the south of Merthyr Tydfil County Borough, but until 1974 was part of Gelligaer Urban District Council in the county of Glamorgan.

It has a population of around 1,400 people. The combined population of Bedlinog and Trelewis has been recently recorded as approximately 3,140, increasing to 3,277 at the 2011 census. Previously, it was surrounded by coal mines and nearly all jobs were related directly to this industry, but all the mines are now closed. Unemployment is high but there are many commuter jobs in places like Cardiff.

Bedlinog is only a 30-minute drive from Cardiff, 45 minutes from Swansea and 45 minutes from Newport. The village is surrounded by steep, rolling green hills, from the top of which the Severn Estuary and the coast of Devon can be clearly seen.

In the past, Bedlinog was also nicknamed "Little Moscow" owing to the relatively high concentration of communists in the village. During the 1930s communists from the village volunteered to travel to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The Welsh socialist ethic still remains in the village, as well as in neighbouring Trelewis from where similar communist volunteers fought in the same civil war.

Bedlinog is the name of the village in both English and Welsh. The meaning of the name is somewhat unclear, but the usual suggestion is that it means the 'house near (the stream) Llwynog'. If so, the first element is a variant of the Welsh 'bod' ('dwelling'), and the second a variant of the name of a stream ('Llwynog') which literally means 'fox'. However, all forms of the name are relatively late (seventeenth century onwards) and show significant variation. During the nineteenth century the name was thought by some to have been formed from the elements 'bedd' ('grave') and 'llwynog' ('fox'), and the form 'Beddllwynog' ('fox's grave') is used by some Welsh speakers today. But it is not the standard Welsh form, and it is clear that 'Bedlinog' was the predominant form used by the area's Welsh-speakers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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Wikipedia