The large Cwm Coking Works complex opened in 1958 and were designed to centralise and maintain production of foundry coke in South Wales. Coal was originally supplied from the adjacent Cwm Colliery (nprn 413936) until its closure in 1986 since when coal was brought to the site by road and rail from various sources. The works supplied coke to the four sites of the British Sugar Corporation and Britannia Zinc at Avonmouth, and produced by-products of gas (which it supplied to a local hospital), tar and ammonium sulphate. The works closed in 2003.

As with other by-product coking works, it produced manufactured gas, benzol, sulphate of ammonia and tar. Some of the clean gas was store in a 1m cubic feet spiral guided gasholder and sold to Wales Gas Board for use in the gas grid. There was a separate gasholder (250,000 cubic feet capacity) used to store untreated gas which was burnt in the adjacent Cwm Power plant. Tar was sent to the tar works in Caerphilly for distillation. Two gasholders were marked on the OS maps from 1960 and were still present in 2022.

The process of coal reception, storage and blending was described and illustrated in: Badcock, A. and Malaws, B. 'Recording people and processes at large industrial structures' in D. Barker and D. Cranstone (eds) 'The Archaeology of Industrialization' 269-289. (2004) Leeds, Maney.
B.A.Malaws, RCAHMW, 5 January 2004.