Stephen HUGHES
These World Heritage Site/Buffer Zones have management partnerships developing a critical mass of projects to provide economic regeneration for the former mining and smelting towns of Blaenavon and Cefn Mawr (Pontcysyllte).
Blaenavon is the only United Kingdom World Heritage site where economic regeneration can be identified as an outcome of its international status. Pontcysyllte is the most popular tourist canal in Britain. At Blaenavon, the major tourist draw is the underground Big Pit Colliery Museum (165,000 visitors per annum). The Steam Railway at Pontcysyllte attracts 83,000 visitors a year.
When Blaenavon was made a World Heritage site over half of the shops in its main street were boarded-up. Here the fabric of the town centre has been restored with the benefit of Neighbourhood Renewal Area grants. Cefn Mawr has benefitted from a Townscape Heritage Initiative (a ‘THI’) scheme funded by the British Lottery. The Blaenavon World Heritage Centre opened in its former ironworkers’ children’s school in Easter 2008 and in its first year of operation has welcomed 17,596 visitors. This development of cultural tourism is made more sustainable by the hire of GPS (satellite) enabled hand-held computer-guides and animations of the workers housing are presented on the web.