Author: Nyddfwch

Geographer

The Redevelopment of Cilfái

Yesterday (18 April 2024), Swansea Council took a first public step towards leasing or selling a large part of Kilvey Hill to a foreign tourist company. The decision was a milestone in a process started in secret in 2017. The years since have seen covert land assembly, including a particularly unpleasant land steal by Swansea Council, as politicians and staff work officially or otherwise to facilitate the plans of the foreign tourist company.

Our abysmal local government system’s callous, unthinking bureaucratic jargon describes the potential sell-off as a ‘disposal,’ as if the land were used tissue. This had happened before when previous generations and local councils enthusiastically embraced industrial development and regarded the destruction of nineteenth-century Kilvey as merely ‘collateral damage’ … a disposal problem.

The transformation of Swansea from an attractive resort to an industrial black spot was beautifully catalogued in a 1986 book called ‘The Brighton of Wales’ (Boorman 1986). Boorman traces the point of departure from unspoiled beaches to the Lower Swansea Valley industrial magnet. Now, the wheel has turned full circle as a desperate local authority, in acts of unbridled boosterism, refers to Swansea as a world-class tourism destination. I can only assume Councillors haven’t recently made that dangerous walk from Swansea railway station down the High Street.

There will be plenty of economic arguments for the developments to go ahead based largely on optimism and faith in the future. One thing is certain: the enthusiasts for the scheme and all the positive comments on those strange news sites don’t live there.

The Council and the local communities have a lot to be proud of regarding environmental recovery and the new uses of the urban woodlands on the east side. I wish the politicians would recognise this instead of chasing a handful of ice cream-selling jobs.

Boorman, David. 1986. The Brighton of Wales: Swansea as a Fashionable Seaside Resort, c.1780-1830 (Swansea: Swansea Little Theatre Company)

Below: The planned Skyline buildings. Incredibly, this picture is of part of Kilvey Hill that Swansea Council don’t actually own.

The Lower Swansea Valley Project and Pollution

Some of you know I spend a lot of time researching the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) intelligence activities over South Wales in World War Two. Eventually, the Luftwaffe bombed several towns, including many attacks on Swansea. The images the Luftwaffe took in preparation for the bombing attacks are often the earliest quality photographic surveys of industrial landscape we have. The main reason I collected such a large archive of photos is because of the landscape history in them. The fact I needed to understand fully the reasons behind the images was just a part of that original journety to understand the records. I’ll be publishing a large book on Swansea and the intelligence war in May. My original Eye of the Eagle book from 1993 is here in PDF.

Anyway, the pictures of the Lower Swansea Valley taken in 1940 and 1941 are an incredible record of the pollution and devastation of the industries in the valley. Eventually, the terrible pollution was ackowledged and a cleanup started in the early 1960s as part of the world-famous Lower Swansea Valley Project. I talk about the Cilfái part in the Project in Chapter Five of Cilfái: Historical Geography .

Below is one of the images in my collection from February 1941 when Luftwaffe airmen took photos of the whole town in preparation for the three nights of air attacks between 19 to 21 February 1941. In the middle of this image you can see the massive Hafod tip created by the Vivians industries. Further right are the even larger tips of the valley industries which destroyed the ecology of Cilfái and North-East Swansea. The White Rock tips are just right of centre. I don’t think there is a single tree in the upper half of this image.

The arrival of Copper in Swansea

The arrival of copper smelting in Swansea changed the nature of industrialisation and transformed the thousand year old coal industry into something new. The redevelopment of Hafod-Morfa and the branding of Swansea Copper as a commodity for tourism involves a lot of verbal gymnastics explaining to new generations and visitors what the copper industry was and why they should be interested in it all. And what it used to look like because it sure as hell doesn’t look like anything now.

It is a tough sell as almost every structure related to the industry was demolished in the twentieth century. The ruins were dirty, dangerous, toxic and were seen as ugly. Fast forward to today when clever marketers will be paid to dress up what is left into a ‘legacy’ tourism…anything is possible with the right amount of ‘Levelling Up’ money. Until it runs out.

Although we have two chimneys and a flavoured whisky business leading the charge to new tourism, there is one legacy of the copper industry that will never be erased…the pollution. I talk of a lot of this in Chapter Three of the Cilfái: Historical Geography book. The copper waste tips of the Lower Swansea Valley were famous on a European scale. most is still there but levelled out and (sort of) grassed over. It continues to inject zinc, cadmium, lead and mercury into the water table.

You can order a copy of Cilfái: Historical Geography on Kilvey Hill, Swansea direct from me, or you can go online to my Lulu site and get one printed immediately. Shop the Independent Bookstore | Lulu

Below: Slag from White Rock will often have the green stain of copper and the remains of the charcoal thrown onto the molten copper at certain times of the smelting process. The nastiest and most toxic tip is right next to the White Rock remains. The waste was thrown on to the meadow of Cae Morfa Carw and the conical pile of waste is like a gravestone over the remains of the pre-industrial landscape.

The Cilfái coal seams

There is a lot of coal on Cilfái. This is why it was so important for Swansea’s early industrial economy. Almost all of the original coal workings have been buried or submerged under new trees and vegetation that has grown up since 1970. The Cilfái coal seams dip northwards so that what was originally at the surface above White Rock Copper Works dips underground so that they are underground at Morriston. This is why Copper Pit was so deep, it had to dig down through the glacial debris in the valley and a lot of Pennant Sandstone Rock. The pioneer geologist William Logan taught himself Geology by closely examining the coal seams on Cilfái. Almost two hundered years later, I was able to reconstruct his view of Cilfái coal by reading his notebooks. Here’s my original sketch plan based on his notes

The full story is in Cilfái:Historical Geography

An early coal mine on Cilfái

One of the most interesting aspects of the history on the hill is coal mining. We know Swansea is based on the coal industry (Copper comes along MUCH later!). the earliest record of coal industry in Swansea comes from 1400 when a deep mine was being dug with all the necessary exenditure on drainage and candles for lighting and picks and shovels, so we can guess it was quite a substantial coal mine.

But the reality is that it was probably in Foxhole on the east side rather than in the town of Swansea. Foxhole has a thousand years of coal mining history!

The full story is in the first Cilfai book on the Historical Geography of the hill.

Cilfái: Historical Geography on Kilvey Hill, Swansea (lulu.com)

Below is what a coal mining adit looks like after a century of plant growth and recovery. This one is above Foxhole!

U-boats in the Bristol Channel

I think it was about 1998 that I did a lot of work on U-boats operating in the Bristol Channel between 1939 and 1941. It all started because of a conversation I had with explosives staff who dealt with mines (not bombs). Because mines were a naval weapon there was a distinction between the army and the navy responsibility for tackling unexploded weapons. The Germans laid mines by U-boat and also dropped the same thing from the air. So both army and naval crews had to deal with the problems created by unexploded mines.

I gave a few talks on the subject and eventually wrote the research up and posted it on my Academia site. You can see the original book here (https://www.academia.edu/84436756/U_Boats_in_the_Bristol_Channel ).

I eventually expanded the work to include the 1944-45 inshore campaign when U-boats returned to the Channel.

Swansea and Cardiff were easy places to drop mines by U-boat and several famous U-boats visited the shipping lanes off Mumbles Head and the Scarweather Sands in October and December 1939.

I’ve written a new book on Swansea and the U-boats which will be out next month.

‘We need to accept the weeds’: the Dutch ‘tile whipping’ contest seeking to restore greenery | Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/we-need-to-accept-the-weeds-dutch-towns-compete-to-remove-the-most-garden-paving

This is such an interesting  story. The basis of the bombsite botany is the specialised  plants that grow on piles of rubble or in challenging  environments.  In past times, they would have grown in the aftermath of the ice ages. Calling them weeds is a bit of a misnomer these days. My article in the next Swansea History Journal explains a lot more about what happened  in the aftermath of the Swansea Blitz in 1941.

The Botany of Bombsites

In the early spring of 1941, two people followed in the footsteps of the bomb disposal teams, firefighters and council workers as they worked through the shattered ruins of Swansea’s blitzed town centre. The first was artist Will Evans, who was keen to document the chaos of ruins and the loss of the heart of the town. Evans left a legacy of vivid watercolours that are well-known. However, the other person was naturalist M. H Sykes, who is less well known. Sykes was a member of the Swansea Scientific and Naturalist Society (SSFNS), and she was a competent botanist with a keen eye.

The ’Three Nights’ Blitz’ inflicted grievous damage on Swansea.  The air raids and the ensuing fires created over 16 hectares of broken buildings and rubble at the heart of Swansea. It must have been horrendous.

In 1941, across the country, botanists realised that the blitzed landscapes would soon offer a unique opportunity to witness a comparatively rare phenomenon. This was the emergence of ‘spontaneous vegetation’, the pioneer plants that would arise on the broken brick and rubble. The phenomenon was first recorded amongst the ruins of London after the Great Fire in 1666. In 1941, expanses of ruins reappeared in London and blitzed towns such as Swansea along with the newly christened ‘bombsite flora’.

My article on the bombsite floras of Swansea is forthcoming in the next edition of Swansea History Journal published by the Royal Institution of South Wales http://www.risw.org/publications.htm

Coming soon.

Image: Eliot Hodgkin was one of the very few artists attracted to the contrasts between the brutality of the war ruins and the vegetation that covered them. This is an extract from one of his most notable blitz flora studies of ruins at St Paul’s in London in tempera. Hodgkin was a master of detail and captured the shape and form of many of the blitz plants at their best. The original is in the Imperial War Museum collection.

Buying the Cilfái books

You can buy all three Cifái books at the fantastic little shop at Swansea’s Environment Centre in central Swansea. I originally just put the History of Cilfái book there, but the Environment Centre kindly offered to stock the other two books as well.

It is good because the profit goes to the Environment centre not a chain like Waterstones or, god forbid, Amazon. I’ve removed from Amazon now. If you want to buy a book online go to my Lulu page

Shop the Independent Bookstore | Lulu

https://www.environmentcentre.org.uk

My Next illustrated talk about Cilfái 26 April

I’ll be giving an illustrated talk about the Environmental History of Cilfái (Kilvey) at Skewen & District Historical Society onFriday 26 April 2024 at Ty Santes Fair (known locally as TSF).

The address of Ty Santes Fair is Compton Road, Skewen, SA10 6BA. Or click on the image here…

Welcome

The next meeting of the Society will be on
Friday 26th April 2024.

Topic: “Environmental History of Kilvey Hill & the White Rock Copper Works”
Speaker: Nigel Robins.

Visitors are always welcome to attend for a single evening or regularly.