History of Swansea - The Port and Industrialisation

The Port and Industrialisation

The South Wales Coalfield reaches the coast in this region, and coal was being exported by the year 1550, along with great quantities of limestone, quarried in the Mumbles area and on Gower and in high demand as fertiliser. Swansea was already a significant port, and although it was small (perhaps 1000 people in 1560), it had one of the earliest town charters granted in Wales and a constant influx of migrants from the Welsh countryside: this influx occasioned a protest from the borough of Swansea in 1603 (Davies, p267).

The population at this time was concentrated around the castle and river. Despite small-scale coal mining, the bulk of the area beyond the town was still largely farm land. Swansea Bay was considered an attractive region and in the 18th century some local notables wanted to direct future development into promoting it as a resort. Their plans were frustrated by the rapid development of industry in the area.

By weight, more coal than copper ore is needed for the process of smelting copper from the ore, so it is more economical to build the smelter near the coal source. Swansea had very local mines, a navigable river, a nearby supply of limestone (necessary as flux), and trading links across the Bristol Channel to Cornwall and Devon, sources of copper ore.

As the Industrial Revolution took off, a series of works were built along the Tawe river from 1720 onwards and a series of mines were opened. Initially, the smelting works concentrated on copper. Coal was brought down to them by waggonways and tramways; copper ore was brought on ships which could sail right up to the works; and the resulting copper was exported out again. Swansea had become "Copperopolis", and the lower Tawe valley became a mass of industry.

More and more riverside wharfs were built. Tramways, waggonways and railways proliferated and connected the different works and the collieries supplying them. Today's Hafod was originally the village of Vivianstown (Vivian & Sons owned the Hafod Copper Works); and Morriston was founded c. 1790 (the exact date is unclear) by the Morris family who owned the Cambrian Works among other properties. "By 1750, the Swansea district was providing half the copper needs of Britain" (Davies, p 316).

The Cambrian Works closed down as a smelter but reopened as a pottery in 1764: pottery-making is another industry which requires vast quantities of coal (available locally) and clay and flint (available from the West Country, readily accessible by water). The Glamorgan Pottery was founded in 1813 by the ex-manager of the Cambrian Pottery, right next door to it and in direct competition with it. Not only the managers of the potteries but many of the workers came originally from Staffordshire. Examples of Swansea pottery can be seen today at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and at Swansea Museum

One of the most well-known pieces of Swansea's history began life at this stage: the Mumbles Railway. This started in the first decade of the 19th century as an industrial tramway: a horse pulling a cart along tramplates. It had a specific branch line into Clyne valley where Sir John Morris, one of the railway's owners, owned coal mines. Despite some early journeys made by tourists, it was not until the 1860s that the railway began to carry passengers regularly, by which time it had acquired rails instead of tram plates.

As the town expanded, gates put up by the local turnpike trust were no longer on the outskirts of town but in the town itself. Originally travel between Swansea and other towns or villages had involved paying tolls. Now, travel around the town itself required toll money. This was naturally an unpopular development, and in 1843, Swansea inhabitants made their own contribution to the Rebecca Riots, burning the Ty Coch gate in St Thomas. In the same year, workers from all the copper works in Swansea went on strike after their wages were cut. They returned to work five weeks later, having failed to restore their wages. The strike must have been born of desperation. It was known that John Henry Vivian, one of the owners of the copperworks, was no supporter of workers' rights: he had blacklisted men involved in earlier disturbances.

Civil disturbances were a regular feature of the 1840s in Swansea. This was the period of the Rebecca Riots, of Chartism in the valleys to the east with the Merthyr Rising and the Newport Rising, and general discontent. Huge crowds would gather when those suspected of involvement in Rebecca activities were brought to the station house, and riot was provoked when one suspect was arrested on the Sabbath (Molloy). At this time, Colonel James Frederick Love commanded militia who were billeted in Swansea, and (in 1843):

Colonel Love had serious problems in deciding how best to stretch his resources. And stretched they were, because it was equally clear that Swansea needed to be strongly garrisoned to cope with violent incursions by unemployed coal and iron workers and discontented country-people, as would Llanelli when the Gwendraeth Valley troubles reached their climax in the following two months. And all the time the Chartist threat hung over the industrial areas to the east.

In this early part of the 19th century, the area which is now Brynmill, Sketty, the Uplands and the university campus was where several of the owners of the "manufactories" lived, in large park-like estates well to the west of the Tawe. The workers were crammed along the banks of the Tawe and lived in poor conditions. The prevailing wind carried the smoke from the copper works to the east, towards St Thomas and Kilvey. A contemporary report written by a doctor describing Swansea Valley speaks of a nightmare landscape, "literally burnt" where few plants would grow, dotted with lifeless pools, slag heaps, mounds of scoriae and smoke from the works everywhere. George Borrow, later to write and publish his Wild Wales, visited the town in the same year, describing it slightly less emphatically as "a large, bustling, dirty, gloomy place". He was not convinced that Swansea people were in fact Welsh. "The women had much the appearance of Dutch fisherwomen; some of them were carrying huge loads on their heads."

The population of the town of Swansea had already increased from 6000 in 1801 to 17,000 in 1851 (Campbell). By 1881, the borough's population was over 65,000. Much of the growth was due to immigration - in 1881 more than a third of the borough's population had been born outside Glamorgan, and just under a quarter outside Wales.

Writimg in 1860, John Murray reports To the traveller who crosses the Llandore bridge at night, the livid glare from the numerous chimneys, the rolling, fleecy, white clouds that fill up the valley beneath him, the desolate-looking heaps of slag on either side, might well recalls Dante's line - "voi che entrate lasciate ogni speranza" and records there are no trees, and instead of grass a yellow sickly growth of chamomile scarcely covers the ground.

The contrast between the living conditions of workers and their employers the mineoweners and Ironmasters was stark, although entertainment interests sometimes overlapped: both workers and employers flocked to the Swansea horse races, for example, held at Crymlyn Burrows. In addition to the racing, this was also the scene of boxing, gambling, cock-fighting, shows and drinking—apparently the temperance movement had not yet taken hold. Swansea also became a focus for literary and cultural life in south Wales. In 1835 a philosophical and literary society was established, which became the Royal Institution of South Wales in 1841, based in the first purpose-built museum building in Wales. Swansea hosted the annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1848 and 1880 (Miskell, 2004).