Aberavon (Welsh: Aberafan) is a town in Wales, in the United Kingdom. The town derives its name from the River Avon, which also gave its name to a medieval lordship.
Today it is essentially a district of Port Talbot, covering the central and south western part of the town. Aberavon is also the name of an electoral ward and a community of Neath Port Talbot county borough.
Aberavon village hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1932 and 1966.
On the Norman conquest of Glamorgan, Caradoc, the eldest son of the defeated prince, Iestyn ab Gwrgant, continued to hold this lordship, and for the defence of the passage of the river built a castle whose foundations now lie underneath the streets around St Mary's church. His descendants (who from the 13th century onwards styled themselves De Avan or D'Avene) established, under line protection of the castle, a chartered town, which in 1372 received a further charter from Edward Le Despenser, into whose family the lordship had come on an exchange of lands. In modern times these charters were not acted upon, the town being deemed a borough by prescription, but in 1861 it was incorporated under the Municipal Corporations Act. From 1832 it belonged to the Swansea parliamentary district of boroughs, uniting with Kenfig, Loughor, Neath and Swansea to return one member; later it acquired its own MP, the most famous to hold the constituency having been Ramsay MacDonald.
Aberavon's rugby league club are called the Aberavon Fighting Irish and play in the Welsh Conference Premier. |
