Penallta Park
Penallta Park is a substantial country park located in the Rhymney Valley in Caerphilly County Borough, South Wales. Covering around 330 acres, it is one of the largest country parks in Wales and is managed by Caerphilly County Borough Council. The park sits on the site of the former Penallta Colliery, one of the most significant deep coal mines in the South Wales Coalfield, and this industrial heritage gives the landscape an unusual dual character — part reclaimed wasteland reshaped into rolling grassland and woodland, part living memorial to the communities whose lives revolved around the pit for nearly a century. It draws visitors for walking, cycling, picnicking, and wildlife watching, and is notable for containing one of the most extraordinary pieces of public land art in Wales.
The colliery at Penallta was sunk by Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Company and began producing coal in 1909. At its peak it was among the largest and most productive pits in Wales, employing thousands of men from the surrounding villages of Ystrad Mynach, Gelligaer, Hengoed, and Maesycwmmer. The colliery had a reputation for both its scale and the tight-knit community it fostered. Like so many South Wales pits, Penallta was deeply affected by the social and labour upheavals of the twentieth century, including the interwar depression and the bitter industrial disputes that defined coalfield life. The colliery closed in 1991 as part of the wider collapse of the British deep-mining industry, leaving behind a vast spoil tip, surface buildings, and a landscape scarred by a century of extraction. Reclamation work began thereafter, gradually transforming the site into the green and open space visitors encounter today.
The most remarkable feature of the park is Sultan, a colossal figure of a horse carved into the hillside in the manner of the famous chalk hill figures of southern England. Sultan was created by the artist Llanelli-born Mick Petts working with local communities, and was completed in 2000. The horse commemorates a pit pony of the same name who worked at Penallta Colliery and serves as a broader tribute to all the thousands of ponies who spent their working lives underground in the Welsh coalfield, never seeing daylight. The figure is formed from mounds of earth and coloured stone and is best appreciated from an elevated viewpoint within the park, from where its full scale becomes apparent — Sultan is around 200 metres long, making it one of the largest equine figures in the world. The creation of the figure involved extensive community consultation and participation, embedding it firmly in local memory and pride.
Physically, the park is a place of considerable variety and quiet beauty. The terrain rises and falls across the former spoil tips, which have been grassed over and planted with patches of native woodland, creating a landscape that feels almost surreal in its greenness given the industrial past beneath the surface. Wildflowers colonise the grasslands in spring and summer, attracting butterflies and bees, while the scrub and woodland edges provide habitat for linnets, yellowhammers, and other farmland birds that have become increasingly scarce elsewhere. The valley views from the higher points within the park are expansive, taking in the broader Rhymney Valley and the moorland ridges of the Caerphilly uplands beyond. On a clear day the sense of openness and height comes as a surprise given the park's relatively modest elevation, a reminder of how dramatically the valley sides rise from the valley floor.
The surrounding area is deeply characteristic of the post-industrial valleys of South Wales. The villages nearby — Ystrad Mynach to the north, Hengoed and Gelligaer to the south and east — retain the terraced housing, chapels, and community halls that speak to their mining origins, and the park functions as a genuine green lung for these communities. Ystrad Mynach itself has a railway station on the Valley Lines network connecting to Cardiff, making the park accessible without a car, and the town provides basic amenities including shops and cafés. The wider Caerphilly County Borough contains Caerphilly Castle to the southwest, one of the greatest medieval fortresses in Europe, as well as the Cwmcarn Forest Drive and Visitor Centre a few miles to the west, making the region quietly rich in things to see and do.
For visitors, the park is open year-round and free to enter. There is a car park accessible from the road near Ystrad Mynach, and a network of well-maintained paths and bridleways traverses the site, making much of it suitable for pushchairs and accessible for people of varying mobility levels, though some of the hillier sections are more demanding. Cyclists are welcome on the dedicated trail network. Spring and early summer are arguably the best times to visit, when the grasslands are at their most colourful and birdlife is active, though the elevated position can be exposed in poor weather and appropriate clothing is advisable at any time of year. Dogs are welcome and the park is well used by local dog walkers throughout the week.
One detail that stays with many visitors is the emotional weight the park carries even for those with no personal connection to the mining industry. The combination of the Sultan figure, the interpretive information available on site, and the simple knowledge that the rolling green hills were once an industrial workplace of enormous scale gives the landscape a reflective, elegiac quality that sets it apart from an ordinary country park. It is a place that asks something of its visitors — an acknowledgement of what was here before — and repays that attention with one of the more moving and distinctive landscape experiences available in South Wales.