Eugene Cross Park, Ebbw Vale
This area became the town’s Welfare Park in 1919. It was renamed after Sir Eugene Cross (1896-1981), who had chaired the Ebbw Vale Welfare executive and the rugby club.
The town’s Welfare Association was one of many mutual aid societies in Britain before the welfare state. One of its first tasks was to give residents better access to sports and leisure facilities. The new park was soon equipped with a rugby stand, cricket pavilion and tennis courts.
Ebbw Vale-born Eugene Cross left his job as a coal-miner to serve in France in the First World War. He won the Military Medal in 1918. He started work at Ebbw Vale steelworks in 1920.
He helped to organise the park’s transfer of ownership in 1923 from the steel company to the townspeople. The park was named after him in 1973 to mark 50 years of service. He was knighted in the Queen’s New Year Honours in 1979.
Eugene was also involved in reopening Ebbw Vale steelworks in the 1930s, following closure in 1929 and mass unemployment. He organised jobless men to turn a riverside refuse dump alongside the park into an open-air swimming bath. The bath opened in 1931 and closed 30 years later. By the eve of the Second World War, an estimated 200,000 adults and 40,000 children had used the bath. Before 1931, young people sometimes drowned when swimming in unsuitable local ponds.
The park’s Bridgend Field has been the home of Ebbw Vale Rugby Football Club since the early 1920s. The team is still known as “The Steelmen”. The club was formed in 1880, initially playing on a field south of here.
In the late 1990s the club’s domestic house at Eugene Cross Park was the home of Tongan international Kuli Faletau while he played for the Ebbw Vale team. His wife and three children moved there from Tonga. They included his son Taulupe, who became a formidable No.8 (at the back of the scrum) and won his 100th cap for Wales in 2023.
Postcode: NP23 5AZ View Location Map