Port Talbot (Aberafan) has a long history as a port, although much of the town’s historic identity is swallowed up by the dominant steelworks . Coal was moved down the Afan Valley to a site originally known as Llewellyn’s Quay, probably from the 1600s or earlier. By the 1750s, a tram line had replaced the pack horse route, and by 1811, iron was also being moved through the valley. Copper ore was imported for the copper works at Cwmafan by the 1830s, and a wharf near Llewellyn’s Quay was built to handle ore (the original Copper Works Wharf).
Port Talbot was identified as a port of interest because of the two large integrated steelworks. The dock was also considered vulnerable because it could be destroyed by bombs on the lock gate and entrance.
Above: Port Talbot from Luftwaffe intelligence records created in 1938-39.
The aircraft was a Do 17P from second Staffel of Fernaufklärungsgruppe 123 Der Adler mit dem Fernrohr,(The Eagle with the Telescope). This image is from that initial mission. The open fields of Mumbles are seen in the fine summer of 1940 with the open lands of the commons on the left side. The wreck of the SS Protesilaus can be seen on the sands at West Cross in the Bay.
Clyne Valley is still intensely wooded and the fields and gardens of western Swansea are still free from the urban density that we see today.
Newport’s port is old, and its original town centre dock was a busy port from medieval times. The take-off point for Newport’s prosperity was the creation of the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, allowing coal to come down straight into the port. The fact that Monmouthshire did not have much of a large-scale iron industry meant that coal was exported straight out of Newport instead of being channelled off into other industries as happened at Swansea and Cardiff. The canal and its associated network of tramways meant that Newport was a vigorous coal exporter, rivalling nearby Cardiff for annual tonnage until the 1850s. Some of the best Welsh steam coal collieries were within ten miles of the port, which provided a lucrative trade up to 1945.
The high level of metalworking and engineering skills in the local population made Newport attractive for ship repair businesses. Newport had five dry docks, two of them (the Tredegar and Eastern No. 2) being particularly large. These larger dry docks were big enough to handle Royal Navy Light Cruisers, particularly effective vessels with large calibre guns. The Luftwaffe was particularly interested in these docks.
The Great Western Railway (GWR) ports of Souh Wales were vitally important in both world wars for the defence of Britain and hadling imports to support the war effort. Although the ports were mostly designed to export coal before World War One, the GWR invested a lot of money in the 1920s to redevelop some of the ports into general cargo import and export. So, Cardiff, Swansea, and Newport were all given better cranes and storage facilities which enabled a mioxed economy develop as coal exports slowly declined. Eventually, Penarth closed as it was too heavily engineered for coal handling to be of much use. Swansea ans Cardiff became important food import ports with good rail links and plenty of power for large grain and frozen food storage. The full story is covered in Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales ports 1939-1941.
Below: A GWR plan from 1933 showing the improvements made to Cardiff Docks before the war.
Below: The GWR coal export rail network in 1933. An incredibly dense network of railways allowing bulk transport of coal from every part of the Glamorgan coalfield.
The Luftwaffe surveys of the Welsh ports are an incredible record of past landscapes that have now changed. Although the intent of the reconnaissance missions was to prepare for the bombing of the South Wales ports in 1940 and 1941, they also recorded some of the earliest and finest detail if the coastal landscape. Many of the best surviving images are explained and interpreted in Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941.
Below: The river mouth of the Afon Nedd and Briton Ferry in February 1941. The burrows had a road used since medieval times to allow travellers to cross the sands at low tides.
Before World War Two, the Luftwaffe intelligence assessment teams under Professor Dr. Heinrich Steinmann were interested in electricity supply. Steinmann believed that the vulnerabilities of the electricity generation and supply industries made extremely valuable strategic targets. Swansea’s power stations were particularly interesting due to their importance in the South Wales power generation network.
Swansea had two power stations, the Strand Power Station (opened in 1900) and Tir John Northeast of Kilvey (opened in 1935).
As a very modern and efficient power station, Tir John was identified as a strategic target as part of the Study Blue research into conducting an air war against Britain. In the Luftwaffe target lists, Tir John was assigned Target number GB 50 56. The full story is in Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941.
Below: a 1930s illustration of Tir John North power station (Kraftwerk) from German intelligence records.
You can always contact me to buy the Cilfái books. Send me a message on FB or use WhatsApp or LinkedIn. Or you can email me at my Gmail address. Eye of the Eagle will be available at an illustrated Bo0k Launch talk at Swansea Central Library in early June. I will probably do some talks on the air war over Wales later in the summer.
You can also buy copies of the Cilfái books at the lovely little shop in Swansea Environment Centre. It’s the only shop in Swansea that stocks them.
If you want to buy the books online, the easiest way is to buy them direct from lulu.com because these are the people who print them. In fact if you use Amazon all they actually do is contact lulu. So cut out the middle man and go straight to lulu.
So you can buy Cilfái: Historical Geography on Kilvey Hill, Swansea. This is the history book of the trilogy and it covers the biggest topics in the history of the Hill. So that is Coal, Copper, Pollution, Restoration and Repair and the Nature Recovery. This one also includes Annexes covering the legal background to White Rock Copper Works from 1737, and the Geological history and the pioneering explorations of William Logan. 126pp, fully indexed and referenced.
The second book of the trilogy is Cilfái: Woodland Management and Climate Change on Kilvey Hill, Swansea. This one covers the environmental issues faced by the hill and the woodlands. A lot of this one reflects my past government work as a programme reviewer for Defra, DCMS and Historic England, particularly where matters of the environment are concerned. I’m a qualified ecological surveyor and have been involved in a number of large environmental schemes since the 2010s. This book is built around my ecological surveys of the Hill and you will see a lot of Annexes here showing how we create Species and Habitat Action Plans for conservation, My records of everything I found within 1 km of The Glade (between 2010 and 2023) including Mammals, insects, Invasive Species and Reptilees and Amphibians. I also include my Open Mosaic Habitat plant list (including bombsite plants). I have produced a sample copy of a standard Woodland Management Plan to show people how to prepare a good conservation plan and I finish up with my discoveries and monitoring of bat populations on the Hill. This book also has discussions of landscape resilience and climate change issues as we saw them in UK Government.130 pp, fully indexed and referenced.
The final Cilfái book is Cilfái: The History and Heritage Features on Kilvey Hill, Swansea. This is based on my new surveys of all the heritage and historic features on the Hill. I spent a couple of years working for UK Parliament, chiefly as a heritage researcher so I picked up al ot of experience working with Parlamentary conservation departments, Historic England and Scottish Heritage. When I reviewed the current records of heritage and archaeology for the hill, I could see they were incomplete or needed updating. This book does that, and I’ve added maps and What3Words locations of all the heritage features on the Hill from the prehistoric sites, coal and copper industries up to the present day with The Green Man. I’ve also added a number of heritage featurews to the list that aren’t on the official lists. All this empasises the point about how special Cilfái actually is.
A lot of people know me as a historian specialising in World War Two and my latest book is a revised and much enlarged version of a book I originally published in 1993. Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941 takes me back to my original research field as a Historical Geographer investigating landscape history. Using Luftwaffe aerial photographs to study Gower landscape sent me in a different direction as I tried to understand the history behind German military intelligence activities in South Wales. Over many years I amassed a large collectionn of Luftwaffe intelligence which portays the reality of the war oiver Wales from the German viewpoint. It also provides a fantastic insight into the activities of the ports of Swansea, Cardiff, Barry and Llandarcy in their finest hour as they supported the nation’s defence and resilience. Using a combination of Luftwaffe intelligence documents and maps and local records from the 1930s, this book examines the reality of why the ports were bombed. A4 size, 170 pp, fully indexed and referenced.
Nigel Robins 