Читать книгу: «The Making of William Edwards; or, The Story of the Bridge of Beauty», страница 15
POSTSCRIPT
From that day William Edwards' fame as a builder of bridges and smelting works was assured. But he could see defects in his Bridge of Beauty; the ascent to the centre was steep and toilsome, and although he was afterwards called upon to erect bridges, not only in Glamorganshire, but in Carmarthenshire and Brecknockshire, he built no more on the same model.
His handsome three arched bridge over the Teify is pierced with hollow cylinders over the piers, adding beauty to strength; but in that as in others he reduced the height with more regard to the useful than the picturesque.
He was a busy man, working for his family and the community six days a week, giving the seventh to divine service amongst his people – services so highly appreciated that in 1756 he was ordained to preach. And he was never a rich man, he gave so largely of his earnings to the suffering poor. And though he must have seen towns springing up around the ironworks he built, and highroads made to connect them, giving employment to hundreds of workers, he was nevermore heard to boast of his doings. He knew and owned that the capital of other men had set his brains and hands at work.
And when at a ripe old age he was laid to rest under the shade of Eglwysilan Church and its giant yews, he left his well-trained son David to inherit his fame and his faculty as a bridge-builder. But he never built a Pont-y-Pridd, and it is with the bridge and town of Pontypridd William Edwards' name is mainly associated, even by those who never recognise in him a pioneer of progress, a benefactor to South Wales.
Indeed, since his day, to meet the increasing traffic, a canal has been cut from Cardiff northward, and the very course of the River Taff diverted, changing the character of the district I have attempted to describe as it was in my hero's day. More recently a railroad to meet the ever-growing demands of ironmasters, colliery owners, and others, has been constructed, still further changing the face of the country, now bristling with iron and tin works. A new bridge has, moreover, been thrown across the river, somewhat higher up the stream, a bridge more in accord with modern requirements, and which has in a measure superseded high-pitched Pont-y-Pridd; but the beautiful old bridge is still standing, a picturesque monument to the memory of its persevering and pious builder, and a reminder to this self-sufficient generation, so proud of its own grand doings, that, but for William Edwards and his bridges and furnaces, progress in South Wales might have slumbered a generation or more.
