It was good to see the Fortieth Anniversary of the Rosehill Quarry park this afternoon. I remember it being set up as the place was a biodiversity hotspot on the hill long before it was transformed by the Rosehill Quarry Group. I can remember it wasn’t a completely popular thing to do in the early 1980s, as increasing access to an area known for trouble was not universally welcomed. Four decades later, it looks like it was always there.
Above: Rosehill’s recent Green Flag at the Fortieth Anniversary of the Group on Sunday 7 September 2025.
I remember writing the notes for a publicity pamphlet some years later when the City Council rebranded the area as the ‘Hillside Wildlife Corridor’ as part of the 1990 landmark Strategy for Greening the City. In those days, Swansea was zoned into a series of wildlife corridors and wildlife reservoirs. With bitter irony for what is about to happen, Kilvey was recognised as a wildlife reservoir.
It was particularly good to see Councillor D. H Hopkins say a few words about Rosehill, as he was central to the setting up of the Wildlife Corridor in the 1990s. He was far too modest about his role, and for me at least, he brought a welcome sense of continuity as if to confirm the long commitment to creating and maintaining the green space. For my part, I often gave little history talks about the area to the Group in the early days, always tempted by the fabulous cakes that Margaret Burdett would bring to the meetings.
Above: The 1990s understanding of wildlife corridors and reservoirs. This work originated in the 1999 ‘Greening the City’ discussions. Swansea is remarkably fortunate in having so many formal and informal green spaces. Political agendas and constrained funding mean that the security of many of them is always precarious.
I think it is also the tenth year the site has been awarded a Green Flag. On Kilvey, we had our first Green Flag this year.
Rosehill has always had unfailing political support from the Council (both City and its successor County Council). The area has transformed into a green jewel for plants and wildlife, and both the Council and the new crop of volunteers have done a fantastic job. One day, I hope Kilvey will get such good political support.
Among about thirty people there, I only recognised one face. A new generation of people has taken over, which made me feel rather old.
Above: The 1990s leaflet for Rosehill, and the Townhill Wildlife Corridor (1994). These were derived from my notes from the research project for the Enclosure of Townhill book. My suggestion was that the original hedgerow banks were replanted with hawthorn, as they would provide texture and contrast with the rest of the plantings for future generations. The Planning Department never took the time to understand me. (Matthew 7.6).
In the autumn of 2022, the local Council announced their plans to remodel the ancient Kilvey Hill landscape for a new tourism development, which would destroy the traces of thousands of years of human habitation and endeavour. The impending destruction led me to do what I could to record the history, ecology, biodiversity and Geoheritage of what is a significantly under-recorded landscape with considerable potential for education, well-being and climate change management.
Documenting the history and biodiversity was relatively straightforward, albeit a challenge to perceptions regarding a large area of land that many people see but few have experienced and even fewer understand. I remember one comment from the local authority about ‘there is nothing up there’. A comment I later understood as a self-serving phrase to make the destruction and loss more comfortable for planning permissions.
Above: The thinly bedded sandstones of sandstone on Kilvey are part of a broad range of types of structure on Kilvey, along with massive beds heavily used for building stone and the bituminous coal seams that were so important to early Medieval Swansea.
I suppose my perceptions were different, having had the advantage of a geological education at school and undergraduate level, including a hectic month of field mapping coastal regions of the Isle of Wight back in the day. I hadn’t appreciated how much of that had stuck with me until I needed to explore the Geodiversity of the Hill through documents, fieldwork and the wonderful archive of the British Geological Survey.
The fact that the natural heritage of any country includes its geological heritage is now slipping away from us. The wonderful naturalists’ clubs of the early twentieth century, such as the Swansea Scientific and Field Naturalists’ Society, were a broad church to all aspects of nature, including geology. But they have disappeared in the swing towards wildlife rather than general nature conservation, which has permanently obfuscated much of our wonderful Welsh geological heritage. The process accelerated as Naturalists’ Societies changed their names to Wildlife Trusts.
The collapse of geology as a subject deemed worthy of learning and the dissolution of the geological part of the National Museum for Wales have meant that describing the significance of geological sites has become challenging, as basic literacy in the nature of rocks and the landscape is in freefall.
Geoheritage and Geodiversity featured strongly in my first book on the history of Cilfái, not least because it was good history as well as good geology (Robins 2023a). I sought to highlight the significance to local heritage of the geology by separating ecology, biodiversity and climate change into the second Cilfái book (Robins 2023b). However, I felt my treatment of Geoheritage in the first book was not enough. I included a more substantial piece on Swansea’s coal history in my book on the Swansea Foxhole Coal Staithes, but the rich history of William Logan, Hendry de La Beche and Aubrey Strahan clearly deserves more (Robins 2025).
‘Every outcrop has the potential to be great’ (Clary, Pyle, and Andrews 2024) was an opening line to a recent special publication from the Geological Society. It’s a great opening line, and it sets a very positive note for a lively discussion on Geoheritage on a landscape scale. It’s a sentiment that is less positively upheld in Wales where our process of listing or recording sites of geological interest is haphazard and starved of interest and funds.
Above: An extract from one of William Logan’s many notebooks from the 1830s. Logan made regular visits to the outcrops above White Rock as he sought to understand stratigraphy and dip of the beds for coal exploration.
Nevertheless, the listing of a Kilvey site visit on the coming UNESCO International Geodiversity Day is a good opportunity to explore and reassess local Geoheritage. In preparing information for the International Geodiversity Day, I was particularly struck by a recent article linking Geoheritage and Cultural Heritage (Pijet-Migón and Migón 2022). The authors have introduced a model of themes at the Geoheritage-Cultural Heritage ‘interface’. It’s a very useful summary of what to explore or be aware of when revisiting geological sites. It helps move forward from traditional geological guides and texts (Owen 1973), which, although very useful, need to be modernised and broader in scope and engagement for a new generation.
Although the Pijet-Migón model doesn’t fit everything, for example, it can be broadened to explore the link between Biodiversity and Geodiversity, it is very useful. Here’s the Cilfái Geoheritage Landscape filtered through an amended model:
Clary, Renee M., Eric J. Pyle, and William Andrews. 2024. ‘Encompassing Geoheritage’s Multiple Voices, Multiple Venues and Multi-Disciplinarity’, Geology’s Significant Sites and Their Contributions to Geoheritage, no. Special Publication 543, pp. 1–7, doi:10.1144/SP543-2024-34
Owen, T.R. 1973. Geology Explained in South Wales (David & Charles)
Pijet-Migón, Edyta, and Piotr Migón. 2022. ‘Geoheritage and Cultural Heritage – A Review of Recurrent and Interlinked Themes’, Geosciences, 12.98, doi:10.3390/geosciences12020098
Robins, Nigel A. 2023a. Cilfái: Historical Geography on Kilvey Hill, Swansea (Nyddfwch)
——. 2023b. Cilfái: Woodland Management and Climate Change on Kilvey Hill, Swansea (Nyddfwch)
——. 2025. Foxhole River Staithes and Swansea Coal (Nyddfwch)
In researching the geology of Kilvey Hill, several issues quickly come to light.
The first is how little geology is actually being taught or even followed as a hobby any more. This is quite remarkable given the massive part Swansea’s geology has played in the history of the town. Swansea’s underlying coal resources were a massive factor in the development and growth of the eighteenth-century town. Without coal, there would have been no copper smelting, and Swansea would probably have remained the ‘Brighton of Wales’ (Boorman 1986). All the more remarkable when you consider that geology was an immensely popular subject for study in Swansea from the 1830s, and a century later, a large part of the University College of Swansea (Owen 1973; 1974). The geology of Kilvey became a training ground for William Logan when he taught himself about Swansea coal and rocks in the 1830s. Some of this will be a central theme in my guided walks for UNESCO Geodiversity Day in October.
The rocks of Kilvey contain a mass of plant and animal traces from the past. Understanding these past ecosystems and biodiversity allowed us to understand and exploit the coal reserves of under Swansea and the wider South Wales Coalfield. These rocks overlie the Tormynydd Coal Vein on the seaward side of the hill above Port Tennant.
Although people are now fully aware of the importance of biodiversity to our lives, less is appreciated about the non-living side of the equation — the Geodiversity of the underlying rocks and soils. Geodiversity is the foundation of the ecological life on the hill. The underlying soils, waste tips, streams, and geological features all influence the recovery of life after the cataclysmic pollution that killed everything on the hill in the nineteenth century.
The links between Geodiversity, Biodiversity, and Climate. Human activity has fundamentally altered the relationship between all three elements. (from an original in Tukiainen et al. 2023).
Biodiversity, Geodiversity and Climate are all interlinked to give us the environment we live within, or are responsible for (Tukiainen, Toivanen, and Maliniemi 2023). Kilvey’s ecosystem was destroyed by industry, coal mines destroyed the water table, and the recovery process has been long and uncertain, but in some places spectacular. It remains a tragedy that some of the recovered green areas of the hill will shortly be destroyed again by the local Council.
Boorman, David. 1986. The Brighton of Wales: Swansea as a Fashionable Seaside Resort, c.1780-1830 (Swansea Little Theatre Company)
Owen, T.R. 1973. Geology Explained in South Wales (David & Charles)
—— (ed.). 1974. The Upper Palaeozoic and Post-Palaeozoic Rocks of Wales (University of Wales Press)
Tukiainen, Helena, Maija Toivanen, and Tuija Maliniemi. 2023. ‘Geodiversity and Biodiversity’, in Visages of Geodiversity and Geoheritage, Special Publications, 530 (Geological Society of London), pp. 31–47
Tuesday, 29 July 2025, saw the arrival of contractors on the Hill to begin implementation of the Reptile Mitigation Strategy. The firm brought some mowing equipment, heras fencing and robotic sentries to the summit. The Reptile Mitigation Strategy is comprehensive, although I don’t accept the supporting survey information on the presence/absence of reptiles in the area. I think the original reptile survey was hastily completed (if it actually happened at all).
The job is big and probably lucrative for someone. The protocol as described in the Mitigation Strategy is adequate for the site, and captured reptiles are to be released on the hill in safer areas.
Above: My survey of the cleared areas on Saturday, 2 August 2025. They are pretty big areas. The red circles are the first three refugia to be built on the verges of the construction site.
The Kilvey bombed landscape is unique in Wales, although bombs were dropped across the Welsh ports between 1940 and 1943, ther survival of any traces is rare. Several shrapnel-scarred buildings remain in Swansea, and a similar situation exists in other European towns and cities. What is unique in Wales is the survival of a landscape with craters that has been allowed to recover or develop naturally.
A look at the biodiversity contribution of the World War Two bomb craters on Cilfái.
I’ll be leading a couple of walks up the top of the hill soon. This year, I’m intent on looking at biodiversity and heritage. The bomb-damaged landscape of Kilvey Hill is now 84 years old, and a lot of it has survived or avoided being bulldozed, as often happens. Ironically, the heritage landscape of the Hill may soon be destroyed by Swansea Council as part of their Skyline tourism obsession.
The Kilvey bombed landscape is unique in Wales, although bombs were dropped across the Welsh ports between 1940 and 1943, the survival of any traces is rare. Several shrapnel-scarred buildings remain in Swansea, and a similar situation exists in other European towns and cities. What is unique in Wales is the survival of a landscape with craters that has been allowed to recover or develop naturally.
Many of you will know of my interest in bombsite botany via my lectures and articles, and one of the chapters in my book on the Three-Nights’ Blitz. Although formed in horrible acts of violence, the Kilvey bomb craters have been transformed by nature into essential wildlife refugia. Some hold small ponds, others are havens of warmer temperatures and protection from the wind, or even fire. The combustion of chemical explosives would have made the craters poisonous after their creation, and of course, the land is peppered with bomb fragments, which have become part of the archaeology of the hill. Nearly a century later, the craters have taken on a new role as centres of plant and wildlife.
I’ll explore this incredible mix of heritage and ecology on a couple of walks. I’ll advertise via Eventbrite, and I’ll let you know here as well.
Above: One of the Kilvey bomb craters with a small mire. June 2025.
A photo-generated 3D model of one of the Kilvey bomb craters, March 2025.
The concept of quick and cheap photogrammetry is now proven, and simple work like this can be comparable to expensive archaeological surveys, which cost far more, often a hundred times more than current archaeological firms charge.
As I said earlier, the purpose of this project was a proof of concept on using photogrammetry as cheaply as possible to allow quick and accurate reconnaissance and survey of small features that generally would not be investigated or be too expensive to survey using current high-cost photogrammetry, drone and lidar techniques.
This example is a bomb crater on Kilvey Hill. The crater was most likely created in the January 1941 attack on the town. The crater is from a large calibre bomb (possibly 250kg) that has penetrated some way into the soft, marshy ground and then detonated.
In the 84 years since the detonation, the crater has softened with the crater lip mostly eroded. The crater frequently fills with water and has a different botanical nature to the surrounding grassland. This crater is a local biodiversity hotspot, allowing moisture to be present all year round and providing better protection from excessive temperatures. A large pine in the centre of the crater has died providing a reservoir of dead wood.
Above an extract from an initial 3D model of one of the Kilvey bomb craters, 2025.
The concept of quick and cheap photogrammetry is now proven, and simple work like this can be comparable to expensive archaeological surveys, which cost far more, often a hundred times more than current archaeological firms charge.
Kilvey Hill experiences frequent storms and high winds, which are a major threat to woodlands and any buildings or structures. The risk of wind damage and windthrow is expected to increase with climate change, with more frequent storms, wind speed, winter rainfall, and faster tree growth.
The projected increase in our winter rainfall is likely to increase wind risk, as rooting depth and root anchorage are both reduced in waterlogged soils. An increase in tree growth rate due to warmer temperatures is possible in areas where moisture availability is not limiting, this could increase wind risk with stands reaching a critical height earlier.
The presence of the TV and phone masts on the hill means that we know a lot about the wind speeds and weather on the hill. However, getting hold of the data is sometimes hard as it can be regarded as a ‘secret’. Anybody who walks the hill will know the signs of wind damage and constant high winds, which are now increasingly common around the year, no longer just the winter months.
We can use the table below to assess wind speeds and damage based on the evidence we see after the storm is over. This table is based on expert fieldwork from the US Forest Service and is used all over the world. Look at the damage in the photos here and see where it is on this list…
It doesn’t matter what your viewpoints are on who or what causes climate change. The evidence is out there, and the question is how to interpret it and design for the future. It might, for instance, be an incredibly risky act for Swansea Council to risk millions of pounds (of money they apparently don’t have) on supporting a risky tourism venture on a Welsh coastal hill that is increasingly exposed to dangerous windspeeds and disruptive weather.
Those who walk the hill regularly know of the health and safety responsibility of taking walkers out on Kilvey in deteriorating or unsettled weather. We never take the risk. Would a profit-centred tourist firm be equally responsible? Would you get in cable cars and zip wires in the bad weather? Equally, how many days a year is Kilvey safe for adventure tourism? I’m not sure, but I can be confident that climate change means that the number of days of safe weather is declining as the climate changes.
Storm damage above White Rock works in January 2025.
Above wind and wildfire damage in the ‘Skyline Zone’ 2023.
In Swansea, as the anniversary of the February 1941 bombing raids approaches, interest in the Blitz always increases.
Kilvey Hill has many bomb craters across its southern part and into the woodlands near Pentrechwyth. Most craters date from September 1940 to February 1941. The German Air Force didn’t aim at Kilvey Hill; it’s just that the bombs that were intended for the docks missed and ended up on the hill. Bomb craters in town were quickly filled in, but craters on the hill were left and still survive today. A few have filled with water and have become biodiversity hotspots.
Above: bomb craters and anti-landing defences on the top of Kilvey Hill as identified by German bomber aircraft in February 1941. The anti-landing trenches are marked with ’11’ and a white line.
Kilvey also has a series of ditches and banks across the top, which were hastily constructed to prevent German soldiers from landing on the Hill in gliders. It was a definite threat, and my reconnaissance research confirms that the Germans had evaluated the usefulness of the Hill as a landing ground if they ever invaded. They survive as a poignant reminder of how real the threat was in 1940. The Council/Skyline development will destroy some of the banks, breaking a remarkable historical link between the darkest days of World War Two and our present day. It is ironic how so much is made of the disappeared Swansea copper industry in Landore is revered, but so much more recent and relevant history is ignored by Swansea Council.
Above: A modern Lidar image of the top of Kilvey Hill showing the anti-landing trenches as they exist today as little square hillocks either side of deep trenches. They would have made landing by glider very dangerous or impossible. The flat part of the hill top was particularly attractive as a landing ground.. Morris Lane runs from the top to the bottom of the image and is seen as a series of earth banks.
Above: The top of Kilvey Hill today. Bomb craters in red, Glider defences in Red.
If you want to know more about all of the archaeological features on Kilvey Hill, they are listed and described in the third Cilfái book available here.
Cilfái: The History and Heritage Features is a 100-page illustrated book of all the historic features on the hill.
In December 2022, several senior councillors and council planning staff met in the Swansea Environment Centre with a group of concerned local people about the proposed Skyline developments on Kilvey Hill. The meeting had been prompted by the leak of information concerning a clandestine operation by Council staff to assemble a portfolio of landholdings on Kilvey Hill, which was to be leased to the Skyline investment company. Some of the land was not owned by the Council, and the authority had made strenuous efforts to obtain the land, not least because key parts of the Skyline development were planned to be built on the top of the Hill. The Council presented a series of rather mendacious arguments and ‘mistruths’ describing why they think they should acquire the land for no charge.
The meeting kickstarted a series of legal events about the unowned land and the broader picture of how the Council were dealing with the entire hill. Controversies over legal entitlement and determining a 999-year lease originally made to the Forestry Commission in 1970 abounded. The legal melee was made even worse by revelations that the hill was a designated quiet area, that there had been inconsistencies in how open access land and footpaths were being managed and a further deterioration in relationships between the Labour Council and local residents. If indeed, such a thing was possible.
The Council Leader(Robert Stewart) promised to ‘share as much as we know’ about the scheme. However, it turned out that he didn’t actually know too much, although he was obviously unwilling (and unable) to share what he did know about dealings inside the Welsh Government, an unfathomable business plan, and millions of pounds of public money being donated to a private-sector tourism venture.
I thought the meeting went as well as could be expected. Which is to say it didn’t go too well. How could it have when the questions (the good, bad, and ridiculous) were batted away with a flourish of ‘it’s too early for that’ or ‘we don’t know yet’. As the atmosphere deteriorated, Stewart descended into the understandable tactic of making stuff up, such as saying a council ecologist had been appointed, all pathways had been comprehensively mapped, and Ecological Impact Analysis had been completed, and a gradual awareness among the audience that this wasn’t a proposal in its early stages, but a carefully planned campaign of several years since local tourism consultant Terence Stevens had come up with the idea. Perhaps Terry got the idea when he became an officer of ‘Skyline Luge Sheffield Limited in 2018.
To try to fill the information gap, I created my own Ecological Constraints and Opportunites Plan (ECOP), something I used to do when I worked for the Civil Service. I was trained to follow the common standard BS42020 in structuring a document that brought together the essentials of a building plan that affected the environment.
I took a photo of one of the slides on the PowerPoint shown to the meeting on the TV screen they had there. I used that as the basis for investigating the land.
Above: The original picture of the Skyline extent shown to the Environment Centre meeting in December 2022. )
I built up an ECOP over four versions one each month (Jan -April 2023), each building on information I could interpret, but all versions were incomplete. I remember having several aggressive emails from Council staff as I asked for information. I could never work out if they were upset with me for asking or Rob Stewart for giving out vague or misleading information. We’ll never know.
Eventually the ECOP turned into the Cilfái Trilogy of books which have formed a solid basis of information on history, woodland management and heritage for me to teacvh the landscape history of the hill.
As is my habit, I posted the last (fossilised) version of the ECOP on my Academia page. What amazes me is the massive number of downloads of this document (including USA and various African countries) and local authorities. So, I guess my structure is being used as a template elsewhere. Which is great.
This has now been reprinted as a 2025 Second Edition with some updates. I’ve also updated the copyright for AI constraints and EU product compliance details.
The first edition was an incredible success and I’d like to thank everyone who attended the illustrated talks and came on the blitz tours in 2024. I’ll be doing more walks and talks in 2025.
This book started with me trying to make sense of a part of my family’s history, so in many ways it is a work of years. I grew up as a child of the inner city of Swansea, a point that came home to me when I eventually realised that both my mother’s and father’s families lost relatives in the bombing.
The story of the loss of Jack Bowers was something I grew up with but the true significance didn’t really hit me until I became a parent myself and I lost the older members of the family. I heard stories of the war from Florence and Ethel (my grandmothers), but they were never overly keen to talk about those years. I’m grateful for the things they shared with me.
The history of the town centre, later known as Castle Gardens, is central to understanding how Swansea was destroyed.
I am so grateful to my friend Dr John Alban for his expert knowledge of the period and the many discussions we have had over the years. John’s generosity and support has been significant for so many of us as Swansea historians. I gained a deeper understanding of fire whilst working on the restoration of the Palace of Westminster (which has a unique relationship with fire itself), and I learned much from working with fire engineers on the Parliament restoration, although none of my colleagues realised I was busy applying what I was learning to the destruction of Swansea in the blitz. My lifelong friend John Andrew was particularly supportive and our long conversations so productive.
I was very privileged to be able to talk with Tony Kilmister about the courageous exploits of his mother and father, who were central to the Teilo Crescent tragedy. The Royal Engineers Association were incredibly helpful and friendly and I remember with great affection spending evenings in the Drill Hall listening to the old soldiers’ stories that put faces and personalities into the painful history of the time.
Also the wonderful support of my wife Alison who does so much to inspire and improve my writing and provide background knowledge on so many things.
Nigel Robins 