Laura Ashley, the fashion designer, was born in Dowlais in 1925.

The Laura Ashley Company was started by Laura & her husband Bernard in a  London flat in 1953. It started with tea towels and scarves in their own distinctive style.

When the company was floated in November 1985, two months after Laura Ashley?s sudden death, it had become an international group with 219 shops worldwide

Henry Seymour Berry (1877-1928) acquired substantial holdings in steel, coal, transport, printing, and shipping. 

He was made a Freeman of the Borough in 1923 and became Baron Buckland of Bwlch in  1926

James Gomer  Berry (1883-1968) and William Ewart Berry together built a vast empire of magazines, regional and national newspapers, including the Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times.

Gomer became Baron Kemsley in 1936 and Viscount Kemsley in 1944. He was made a Freeman of the Borough in 1955.

William Ewert Berry (1879-1953) and James Gomer Berry together built a vast empire of magazines, regional and national newspapers, including the Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times.

 William was made Baron Camrose in 1929 and a Viscount in 1941.

John Collins was born in Taunton in 1880 and came to Merthyr when he was about ten years old.

He fought in the Boer War and also served in India. In 1914 he joined the Welsh Regiment.

He won his Victoria Cross whilst serving in Palestine with the 25^th Battalion, The Royal Welch Fusiliers. The citation states ?...although isolated and under fire from snipers and guns, he showed throughout a magnificent example of initiative and fearlessness.?

Known as Jack the V.C., he died in 1951 and is buried in Pant Cemetery.

Thomas Dyke (1816-1900) was born in Merthyr and played an active part in its public life for the greater part of a century. Trained at Guys and St. Thomas?s hospitals he was parish surgeon for various Merthyr districts and for the Dowlais Iron Company.

He was appointed Merthyr?s Medical Officer of Health in 1865.

The improvements in water supply, sewerage, sanitation, inspection, and housing, most of them under his guidance, meant that by the end of the century Merthyr?s average death rate was less than the average for other industrial centres and the death rate from infantile diarrhoea for most of 1865-1900 was the lowest of any town in the United Kingdom.

Dyke was also a prominent Freemason, a founder of the Merthyr subscription library and a keen advocate of town incorporation.

Trystan Edwards (1884-1973), had a brilliant undergraduate record at Oxford before embarking on an architectural career.

He served his articles under Sir Reginald Blomfield and began to lecture at Liverpool University in 1911. He joined the Ministry of Health after serving in the navy during World War I, dealing principally with housing policy. In 1933 he was ahead of his time by founding the Hundred New Towns Association, a policy which didn?t bear fruit until after the Second World War.

In private practice he wrote a number of books about architectural  and planning philosophy. He also wrote ?Merthyr, Rhondda and the Valleys? published in 1958.

Sir Samuel Griffith, 1845-1920, was born in the Glebeland, Merthyr Tydfil. His father was a Congregational Minister who emigrated, with his family, to Australia in 1854.

He was Premier of Queensland, Australia from 1883 to 1888 and  again from 1890 to 1893.

He was Chairman of The Constitutional Committee of the National Australian Convention in 1891.

From 1903 to 1919 he was First Justice of The High Court of Australia

John Hughes (1814-1899) trained as an engineer at the Cyfarthfa Ironworks in his native Merthyr Tydfil. He acquired an international reputation in marine engineering and armament production.

He was invited by the Tsar to help in the development of Russian railways and heavy industry.

He moved to the Ukraine in 1870 and established a steelworks at Hughesovka (Yuzovka) which was first renamed Stalino & then Donets?k.

Jack Jones, (1884-1970), was born in Merthyr and became a coalminer at the age of 12. He was politically active in turn, in the Communist Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Party and Oswald Moseley?s New Party.

His novels include, ?Bidden to the Feast?, 1938  and ?Off to Philadelphia in the Morning? published in 1947, the latter being the story of Joseph Parry.

His three volume autobiography is among his finest achievements

Richard Lewis (1807/8-1831), better known as Dic Penderyn, was a native of Aberavon.

At the time of the 1831 Merthyr Rising he was a miner in Merthyr Tydfil.

He was charged with feloniously wounding Donald Black of the 93^rd (Highland) Regiment. He was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Despite a petition of 11,000 names for his reprieve, he was hanged at Cardiff on 13^th August, 1831. His last words on the scaffold were reported to be ?O Arglwydd, dyma gamwedd? ? ?O Lord, what injustice?. He is buried in Aberavon.

Later in the century another man confessed to the crime for which Lewis had been hanged.

William Thomas Lewis (1837-1914), later Lord Merthyr, was probably the most powerful figure in Welsh industry in the decades before 1914.

From a lowly beginning in 1855, he rose, by 1880, to be the manager of all of Lord Bute?s mineral, docks, railways, urban and agricultural property.

He became a major coal owner and established the Lewis Merthyr Consolidated Collieries Ltd. He was Chairman of the Coalowner?s Association and was totally opposed to trade unions.

He was made a Freeman of the Borough in 1908 and was raised to the peerage in 1911.

The monument was relocated from the original site outside the General Hospital.

Johnny Owen, 1956-1980, began boxing at the age of eight.

By the time he was 24, he was the British, Commonwealth  and European Bantamweight  Champion.

He was shy, kind and unassuming outside of the ring which was the only place where he was ?comfortable?. He became known as ?The Matchstick Man? owing to his skeletal frame .

In 1980 he was knocked unconscious in a World Title fight  in Los Angeles. He went into a coma and died six weeks later.

Eddie Thomas, 1925-1997,  was born in Merthyr .

He was a miner who won the Amateur Boxing Association lightweight title in 1946. He turned professional and became the British, European & Empire welterweight champion from 1949 to 1951. His weight difficulties and injury forced his retirement in 1952.

He became a very successful manager and took both Howard Winstone & Ken Buchanan to World Championships.

He was Mayor of Merthyr Tydfil in 1994 and later became a Freeman of the Borough

Lucy Thomas  (1781-1847), was one of the most remarkable people in the south Wales coalfield. She is considered to be the ?Mother of the Welsh steam coal trade?.

It was the coal from the Waun Wyllt Colliery at Troedyrhiw opened by her husband Robert in 1824, that helped to establish the reputation of Welsh coal on the London market.

Lucy & Robert Thomas are commemorated by a decorative fountain at the southern end of Merthyr High Street. 

Richard Trevithick from Camborne in Cornwall was carrying out work on the stationary steam engines at the Penydarren Iron Works for Samuel Homfrey.

For some time he had been experimenting on self-propelled steam vehicles.

Whilst at Penydarren, he had the opportunity to try his railway locomotive on the Penydarren Tramroad.

On 21^st February, 1804, Richard Trevithick?s  locomotive was used to haul a train of 10 tons of iron and 70 passengers along the Penydarren Tramroad from Merthyr to Abercynon (then known as Navigation), a distance of nearly ten miles.

This was the first steam engine to haul a load on rails!

A native of Dowlais, Gwyn Alfred Williams (1925-1995), was a lecturer at Aberystwyth University followed by professorships at York and Cardiff.

His books on Welsh subjects include ?  ?The Welsh in their History? 1982, ?The Merthyr Rising? 1978, ?When Was Wales?? 1985 and ?Madoc: The Making of a Myth? published in 1979.

He was a Marxist who later joined Plaid Cymru.

He took part in many television progammes of which his series with Wynford Vaughan Thomas, ?The Dragon Has Two Tongues? aroused much interest in Welsh history.

Howard Winstone, 1939-2000, was born in Merthyr Tydfil. He lost three fingertips in a factory accident which meant that he was never a great puncher, but won a Gold Medal at the 1957 Commonwealth Games followed by the ABA championship.

He turned professional in 1959 and became the undefeated British & European featherweight champion from 1961 to 1968. He fought three times for the World Championship losing each time before, after the retirement of Vincente Saldivar, winning the World Title in 1968. Having passed his best, he lost the title in the same year.