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.

Kilvey or Cilfái?

The three books on the history, heritage and ecology of the hill are all called ‘Clifái’ rather than the anglicised spelling ‘Kilvey’. This isd because spending some time in meetings with people from New Zealand and England who are part of the Skyline proposals, I shuddered at the mangling of the name by people unfamiliar with Swansea or our local culture or heritage. I also wondered about the significant risk that the hill would be renamed ‘Skyline Hill’ in official documents.

I decided to revert back to the Welsh spelling of the name. ‘Kilvey’ as a placename is not old. It is part of the general anglicisation of Welsh place names that ocurred in the nineteenth century as part of the Ordnance Survey mapping of the land. The name went through several spelling changes as the Ordnance survey tried to create an english name that sounded close to the original Welsh.

It looks and sounds far better in Welsh and it gives back its identity as one of Swansea’s oldest places.

Kilvey Hill (Cilfái), Swansea

It was June 2021 when I first started putting together my research on Kilvey Hill. Incredibly, my first notes on the hill were made in 1987! Now it is so nice to see the three books finished, although my environmental and survey work will continue for a long time.

A lot of my ecological survey work is in the second cilfái book covering Woodland Management and Climate Change.

You can see my current books here on the lulu online store.

Shop the Independent Bookstore | Lulu

Beginning

Its getting harder to update people on the publications and writing work. Hopefully a little blog like this will help as many people aren’t keen on the usual social media. I’ll post book news and lectures, walks and talks news here. Hopefully it will be OK. As usual you can message me using LinkedIn and WhatsApp and Messenger will get to me (eventually) it just takes time.