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The lamplighter reached up with his lighting pole to ignite the burners of the gas streetlamps in Market Street in Pontypridd. His hobnailed boots rang on the cobblestones of the quiet square as he strode in the shadows cast by the flickering yellow flame of each gaslamp in turn. Sometimes the gaslights in Market Street and Taff Street were left on all night as a protection against burglars and night prowlers and the lamplighter put the lamps out at dawn. But he usually lit them in the early hours of the morning to light the way on market days for the farmers who arrived in a procession of horse-drawn carts to unload their butter, eggs, cheese, bacon and meat for the stalls set out in a windswept, uncovered area where today's meat market shelters beneath its roof of glass. It would be many years yet to the close of Queen Victoria's long reign and to the end of the nineteenth century which brought brighter street lighting to Pontypridd from the new incandescent 'mantle' lamps. The lamplighter could remember back before gaslight first came to Pontypridd in late January 1851 to streets in pitch darkness except for some places like the market approaches, which were illuminated by a few naphtha flares or an occasional oil streetlamp. © Don Powell 1996
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