Tonypandy is a town in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taff, within the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan, south Wales, lying in the Rhondda Fawr Valley. It is one of the principal shopping areas in the Rhondda and has many shops to cater for all needs. A 30,000 sq ft ASDA superstore has recently opened on the site of the Scotch Colliery, creating 300 jobs.
The town lies near the Mynydd y Gelli Iron and Bronze Age settlement and stone circle.
A major event in the town's history was the Tonypandy Riot of 1910.
Tonypandy is also a term coined by the character Alan Grant in Josephine Tey's 1951 novel The Daughter of Time for faulty collective memory or popular history. The widely-known account of a historical event (such as the Tonypandy Riot), it is argued, may very well be entirely fallacious.
