Local Facts
Cyfarthfa Ironworks
In the summer of 1802, Admiral Lord Nelson began a tour of South Wales.
They took a detour from the main route to Milford Haven to travel south to the Iron Works at Merthyr Tydfil, a site for the manufacture of naval cannon.
The Star Inn
They stayed at the Star Inn at Merthyr Tydfil, run by Miss Jenkins and paid a bill of 6 pounds and 1 shilling for loggings (the detour to “Myrter Tydder” cost an extra 16 pounds 2 shillings and 2 pence).
A party followed at the Star where they toasted Nelson’s health in Welsh, possibly with some of the “best wine” apparently sent to the Inn by Homfrey, the Ironmaster of Pendarren.
The following morning it was said that the two correspondents travelling with the party arranged for a large crowd to lead a procession to the Star Inn with a banner painted with the words “NELSON AND NAVY” and a band playing “Rule Britannia”. Nelson waived from his window and accepted “three hearty cheers” from the crowd.
Richard Crawshay the local ironmaster was so excited at the visit that he invited Nelson to tour his works at Cyfarthfa. When he met him he reportedly grabbed Nelson by the hand and shouted words to the crowd that entered into the folklore of the visit and were widely reported, “Here’s Nelson, boys; shout, you beggars!”
“Unfortunately, it was reported that three persons were wounded during the celebrations, one young boy fatally, by an “extemporised gun made of a hollow bit of iron”, according to Wilkins’s. It was noted that Lady Hamilton gave a “handsome present to the parents” to pay for the funeral.
During this “unheralded” and “unexpected” visit Nelson met a retired Veteran named Will Ellis – a former rating who he greeted by name and to whom he gave a few guineas according to the local newspaper reports. He also met and a “Captain Jibb” of Dowlais, a retired merchant seaman.
The Mug
In his History of Merthyr Tydfil, Charles Wilkins noted that the cup Nelson drank from in the Star was still hanging there at the time of writing – in 1907. “Nelson’s Mug” was a feature of the Star Inn until it was demolished. Its owners took it to London, but the Merthyr Express noted in a report in 1961, that, owing to the “kindness of a local relative”, the cup was then on loan for display at Cyfarthfa Museum.
Where is the mug now? - Do you know?
Main Sources: Wilkins’s “History of Merthyr Tydfil”, articles based on reports in the “Hereford Journal” and “Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal”, Nelson Papers, “Nelson and the Hamilton’s in Wales and Mon. 1802” by Freeman and Gill, Merthyr Express and notes from the National Museum recorded on the “Gathering the Jewels” website.