Ferndale is a town situated in the Rhondda Valley in the county district of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. Neighbouring villages are Blaenllechau, Maerdy and Tylorstown. Ferndale was industrialised in the mid-19th century. The very first coal mine shaft was sunk in 1857 and was the very first area to be intensively industrialised in the Rhondda Valley. In Welsh, Ferndale is called Glynrhedynog, the name of one of the old farms on which the town is built. In its early stage Glynrhedynog was additionally referred to as Trerhondda after the name of the initial big church to be built in the community. The identifying of negotiations after chapels was widespread in Wales at the time, as is displayed in village names such as Bethesda, Beulah as well as Horeb, but neither Glynrhedynog neither Trerhondda was destined to be used for long. Glynrhedynog is made from words "glyn" indicating valley and also "rhedynog" suggesting ferny, and so coal from the Glynrhedynog pits was marketed as Ferndale coal, a a lot easier name for English buyers to assimilate. The Ferndale pits are what attracted the workforce and their families to the area, and by the 1880s "Ferndale" was well established as a flourishing town. With the phasing in of multilingual road signs from the late 1980s onwards, the name Glynrhedynog gradually re-emerged as well as is currently the formally marked Welsh language name for Ferndale. The Welsh language is on the increase in Ferndale after the village took on the English language during the Industrial revolution. A Welsh language college is positioned near the park as well as the college is called after the park's lake, 'Llyn-y-Forwyn.' (The Maiden's Lake).
