Tag: Environment

Ecological Constraints and Opportunities (using Kilvey in Swansea)

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 Controversies over legal entitlement and determining a 999-year lease originally made to the Forestry Commission in 1970 abounded.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.

Below are screen shots of one of the versions…

Cilfái: Woodland Management and Climate Change on Kilvey Hill, Swansea ISBN 978-1-7393533-1-5

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.

This book started out as a collection of notes made over more than a decade of surveys in Welsh woodlands. What started out as a historical investigation into industrial archaeology in woodlands transformed into a catalogue of what climate change, government policy and local politics is doing to our landscape. As I write this Cilfái is threatened once more with proposed transformation that increasingly looks like destruction.


This is a companion volume to Cilfái: Historical Geography on Kilvey Hill, Swansea. But this one is more about the environment of the woods and the climate change that is already changing the nature of the land. Climate change is now part of life and the next generation will be challenged with adaptation to what is happening. This book is my chronicle of what some of that means for Cilfái (Kilvey), this most special part of Swansea’s character that has been abused, ignored and loved…depending on where you live and what your politics are. Some of this work is based on my government experience as a programme reviewer of many environmental and cultural projects across the UK where I experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of politicians, the Civil Service and successive government policies or the lack of them.


Authors always have inspiration from somewhere and I am no different. My inspiration has been in the conversations and actions of many colleagues in my time working in UK Government in Defra, MOD, Cabinet Office, and Parliament. They all contributed, sometimes unwittingly. You can often learn a lot about a topic by listening to people who know very little about it but who never feel restricted in holding an opinion. Climate change is one of those topics.
I have been privileged to have had the company of experts in many conversations about the topics covered here. But notably, the Forestry Commission was laid bare to me by veteran forestry man David Connick. Equally, the passion of my friend Keith Clement in worrying about where we are going has constantly coloured my sense of urgency.
The commitment and enduring engagement of the Kilvey Woodland Volunteers never ceases to amaze and inspire, and I regularly see incredible generous acts of sharing and care for the Hill that should be an example to all volunteer groups.

I produced or maspped a lot of data (both historical and current) using QGIS. Here you can see the 1980s woodland compartments and their relationship with the original industrial waste tips.

Cilfái: Historical Geography on Kilvey Hill, Swansea ISBN 978-1-7393533-0-8

This has now been reissued as a 2025 Second Edition with some updates, minor amendments and some new illustrations. I’ve also updated the copyright and EU product compliance details.

This study has been heavily reliant on past teaching notes and lessons learned from students’ questions and discussions over many years. I am indebted to all of them. Grateful thanks to the staff of West Glamorgan Archives Service and the archivists at the British Geological Survey in Keyworth who allowed me to spend time with William Logan’s original notebooks. The help of experts such as Dr John Alban and Gerald Gabb has always been beyond value and they have helped me as a sounding board and unlocking further fields of expertise which ave been so valuable. The contributions and discussions with my oldest friend John Andrew on geology and the rocks of Townhill and Kilvey have been particularly inspiring. John passed away in August 2024 and I miss his help and support terribly.

The cover of Cilfái was part of a painting of White Rock I did a while ago, mainly to show the extent of the Cae Morfa Carw waste tip (the orange land). The Tawe is on the right, and the original long workhouse of White Rock is at the top.


I must also thank the staff and colleagues at Coed Cadw/Woodland Trust who, unwittingly perhaps, spurred me on to re-explore Kilvey some thirty years after I last surveyed the land in the late 1980s. All the modern mapping was completed using the open-source QGIS application which has become a central tool as a landscape historian over the past ten years. Finally, I must mention the help and support of Kilvey Woodland Volunteers. Without the passion and commitment of the volunteer body over many years, I doubt that Kilvey would be the special place it has become. As I write this, Kilvey is under more threats from the local council and developers, and I hope this little book records a few milestones in the ongoing Kilvey story rather than an ending.


The first edition of Cilfái was remarkably successful. The aim was to fill a gap in knowledge about the Hill in the constant challenge to take care of it in the face of threats of irreversible destruction from tourist developments and an uncaring local authority. There are now many more local environmental and residents groups aware of the current value of the land and the potential loss Swansea faces if the destruction begins. This book was the first of the Cilfái trilogy, the second book covered Woodland Management and Climate Change, and the third book covered the heritage features on the hill. This book was rushed into print to address claims from the Local Authority that there was ‘not much up there’. Since 2023, I’ve taken hundreds of people on walks to view the biodiversity, history, and heritage of Cilfái, and I’ve packed out numerous community centres and halls to talk about the history. Hundreds of people have been converted to the value of the landscape we may lose.

Above: A coal adit on Kilvey was left to regenerate after about 40 years of peace. Swansea Council may be seeking to destroy this land, which they consider ‘worthless’.

My books: latest…

I’ve now got a stock of my latest book Y Tân.

Y Tân: A History of Destruction, Swansea 1941 is about my history of the Three Nights Blitz in February 1941. The town suffered appalling damage, and many argue it has never recovered. My grandfather died fighting the fires on the last night of the Blitz in Castle Street which was the site of a number of tragedies on that dreadful Friday.

In Y Tân I examine the situation in Swansea in the month before the attacks and look at the vulnerability of Swansea to German bombs and incendiaries. I examine the history of the weapon that destroyed the town and explain why Ben Evans was so vulnerable to fire. I examine the history of Castle Gardens and the reasons it became so dangerous. I also reconstruct the events of the three nights with eyewitness testimony from local people, war diaries and German air force sources. A chapter explains what happened to the piles of rubble in the town that eventually gave way to the redevelopments we see today—copiously illustrated with photos, maps and archive records from the author’s collections. Fully academically referenced.

Y Tân complements the groundbreaking examination of Luftwaffe intelligence maps and plans published earlier this year, Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941.

Y Tân is £16.99, easily available from the author, or you can buy it online here.

Also available from me or online:

Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941: A4 170 pages with over a hundred illustrations and map extracts.

The Cilfái Trilogy

Cilfái: Historical Geography on Kilvey Hill, Swansea: £15.99, many colour illustrations and maps, 126 pages

Cilfái: Woodland Management and Climate Change on Kilvey Hill, Swansea: £15.99, many colour illustrations and maps, 130 pages.

Cilfái: The History and Heritage Features on Kilvey Hill, Swansea: £14.99, many colour illustrations and maps, 98 pages.

Contact me via email at nyddfwch@gmail.com or message me. All payments are made easily with Paypal.

Or you can order from my bookshop at Nigel A Robins: Geographer – Books and Publications Spotlight | Lulu

Cilfái: Yi-Fu Tuan and a Sense of Place

Yi-Fu Tuan was one of the most influential geographers of his generation. Tuan created the concept of ‘Topophilia’, a bond between people and a place or setting. In a landmark book, Tuan explored the many ways people bonded themselves to their environment (Tuan 1974). The intimacies of personal encounters with a space produce ‘a sense of place’. This is what Cilfái has. Equally, it is what many modern local authorities strive for and fail to achieve. Cilfái is a runaway success, whilst Castle Gardens is a runaway failure. Cilfái is a miracle of the natural environment, born out of the criminal pollution of the past whilst Castle Gardens, or the St David’s Centre, are poorly devised spatial concepts that have little bearing on the needs of the community and their spiritual life.

Yi-Fu Tuan in 1998.

Yi-Fu Tuan is one of the reasons I became a geographer. He had me at the line:

‘Awareness of the past is an important element in the love of place.’

(Tuan 1974: 1332)

The hill of Cilfái fits perfectly with Tuan’s idea that a ‘place’ or ‘space’ needs to be a natural unit with which people can readily identify. The hill has historical continuity and boundaries; it can be known personally in a way the wider city of Swansea can never be because it is too disparate and big. One of Swansea’s most famous history books is ‘The Story of Swansea’s Districts and Villages’.  That’s no accident; the author knew what he was talking about (Thomas 1969).

When Pete Thomas created Green Man, he had tuned in to the same emotion of recreating space and place on the hill.

I hope we get to keep it.

Thomas, Norman Lewis. 1969. The Story of Swansea’s Districts and Villages (Swansea: Qualprint)

Tuan, Yi Fu. 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (New York: Columbia)

More on Swansea coal

I’m still working on the history of geological exploration in and around the Swansea area. Some of it was included in the first Cilfái book, where I wrote about the early work history of William Logan, who learned much of his early geology studying the coal veins of Cilfái.

Knowledge of every coal vein in the area was once the lifeblood of the Industrial Revolution. It is hard to believe now when we can walk through the lush green vegetation of Cilfái without seeing any evidence of the past unless we make an effort to dig to find some.

During our ITV filming on Monday, I was asked about the Tormynydd coal seam. This substantial coal layer, which extends from the seaward side of the hill to Neath and Port Talbot, played a pivotal role in the Industrial Revolution. Like all Cilfái coals, it is bituminous or binding coal that can burn with a cloud of thick black smoke and tends to stick in big lumps when it burns down. (Conybeare and Phillips 1822: 426). The Tormynydd vein is at the bottom of the sketch map and is marked today by a line of big quarries and tunnels across the front of the hill.

My sketch map of the coal veins across Cilfái. It has to be in pencil because I keep updating it as I find more sources and information.

Knowledge of the coal veins of Cilfái and wider Swansea was passed from father to son for generations and it wasn’t until the 1790s that people started to think seriously about understanding the nature and relationship of the underground coal veins.  The first map of coal in the area is William Smith’s map dated 1815 (but based on considerable local knowledge). There’s an extract of it below (Macfarlane 2020).

My sketch plan is based on diaries and memoirs from various times. It is incredible to think that Cilfái had about 10 coal veins providing coal for White Rock and Middle Bank in the 1790s

Above: This is an extract from the earliest map of the local Geology we have. This is dated 1815, but is based on lots of earlier information from the 1700s. This map pre-dates the Ordnance Survey plans for Swansea so gives us a different view of priorities for understanding the main features of Swansea. William Smith had to devise a set of colours to depict the different types of rock (or ‘Strata’ ) that he found. Smith decided on blue to depict limestone…a convention that we still honour today. The grey shading is the ‘coal measures’, the rocks of sandstone and mudstone that contained the precious coal seams (veins in Smith’s time). The fact that Kilvey has a place name shows how important the hill was as a landmark in Swansea’s coal geography. You can see the crosses that mark the location of Swansea’s biggest coal mines at the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

Conybeare, William Daniel, and William Phillips. 1822. Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales: With an Introductory Compendium of the General Principles of That Science, and Comparative Views of the Structure of Foreign Countries … (W. Phillips)

Macfarlane, Robert. 2020. STRATA: William Smith’s Geological Maps, 1st edition, ed. by Oxford University Museum of Natural History (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd)

Cilfái and the Lower Swansea Valley: the essential books.

There are several crucial books on the history of Cilfái and the Lower Swansea Valley that serve as invaluable references. These are the books that form the foundation of your understanding. Without them, comprehending the reasons behind certain actions, inactions, and unresolved issues can be a daunting task. As with any large organisation, Swansea Council grapples with a lack of corporate memory and knowledge, particularly concerning the valley. In fact, some of the current issues with disputed ownership and title of the hill stem from the lack of historical knowledge and records among younger or less-experienced staff.

Perhaps the most famous book is the Lower Swansea Valley Project (Hilton 1967)This is the handbook summarising the scope and delivery of the Lower Swansea Valley Project. For decades, it has been a standard reference for environmental and ecological history. I used this book extensively to research the first Cilfái volume. The LSV Project remains a milestone in the history of government, local authority, and academic teamwork, and the work results have benefitted Valley residents immensely.

The Hilton volume documents, in thirteen chapters, the history, drainage, engineering, transportation, and social aspects of the LSV and the challenges involved in delivering change.

The second milestone book for the history of Cilfái and the Valley is Dealing with Dereliction. (Bromley and Humphrys 1979)This book came out over a decade after the Hilton volume and chronicles the challenges and changes the Project brought about. It is a wonderful example of a project closure report covering the benefits delivered and remaining issues. In my civil service days, I used it to illustrate how to manage the lifecycle of a large government programme or project.

Last but certainly not least, I’ve selected the City Archives Office booklet from 1991 describing some of the Archives Office holdings covering the LSV Project (Alban 1991). The cover notes were written by Dr J.R. Alban, who many will know as one of Swansea’s most significant historians. Dr Alban, who was our City Archivist at the time, wrote many such booklets. If you can get to see a copy, this is the quickest way to understand some of the archived records of Cilfái and the surrounding area.

You will find all these books easy to consult in Swansea Library and the West Glamorgan Archive Service on the big bookshelf!

Alban, J.R. 1991. ‘Rebuilding a Future: The Reclamation of the Lower Swansea Valley Exhibition Catalogue’ (Swansea City Council)

Bromley, Rosemary D. F., and Graham Humphrys (eds.). 1979. Dealing with Dereliction: The Redevelopment of the Lower Swansea Valley (Swansea: University College of Swansea)

Hilton, K. J. (ed.). 1967. The Lower Swansea Valley Project (London: Longmans)

Penllergare: The Ancient Trees

The latest press release from Welsh Government about the National Forest for Wales confirmed that Swansea’s Penllergare Valley Woods has been confirmed as a National Forest site. I think this makes it one of the hundred announced sites so far.

It is a clever bit of policy from Welsh Labour and throws a bit of recognition and identity branding the way of some struggling woodland sites. Creating a Welsh ‘network’, however fragmented, can only be a good idea.

The pre-medieval road to Nyddfwch in the Penllergare Valley Woods in 2018.

The name of Penllergare is as confusing as its location. It is probably an anglicisation of nearby Penllergaer. The lottery-funded restoration project adopted the name from the long-gone mansion owned by the Llewelyn family. The awkward anglicisation always makes me uncomfortable and I tend to refer to the area as the Llan Valley or Nyddfwch which were earlier locality names and are far more in keeping with modern sensibilities.

Above: The Penllergare woodlands are a complex mix of ancient woodland, garden planting, invasive non-natives and coal mining archaeology. An incredibly rich mix of history and environmment.

The valley woodlands thoroughly deserve inclusion in the National Forest list. I spent nearly ten wonderful years surveying and researching the landscape and woodlands until I felt compelled to leave in the face of the ugly politics and personalities that run the charity. Some of the staff and volunteers I worked with were some of the finest people I ever experienced in conservation circles, although all have been hounded out by the organisation, which is such a shame.

The original mission of the lottery-funded project was to recreate the nineteenth-century estate gardens of the Llewelyn family. It was centred on making something of the remaining walled garden and the paths and planting of the Llewelyns, a wonderful collection of exotic trees, native (1800s) planting, and a collection of Rhododendrons. The premise was ambitious in the early 2000s, and many of us were surprised that it got funding, as we knew the concept was challenging because of climate change and the lack of surviving substantive features. I think the charity running the place is now pressing for more money to keep the place going. Some of you who came to my Environment Centre lectures may remember I compared the limited effectiveness of money invested in Penllergare with the far better return on investment of money spent on Cilfái.

Above: The Nyddfwch Oak in Penllergare.

The wider area of woodland contains significant ancient trees, 1950s Forestry Commission planting and a spectacular collection of unusual and exotic tree species (the remnants of the nineteenth-century garden). Much is made of the links to the Llewelyn family, although they abandoned the site for a nicer house elsewhere. I imagine the family’s estate managers will be unhappy at this latest National Forest status as they were hell-bent on selling for housing; the land is on a short lease for the charity.

Above: Ancient tree stumps from the Penllergare valley. The area was cleared for timber in the 1940s although many trees and ther carcasses survive providing an excellent reservoir of dead wood. At one time the management wanted to sell the wood for firewood LOL.

The history of the nineteenth century is only of limited significance. Far more interesting is the history of the valley in the early 1700s, when it was devastated by coal mining. So, the land is a good example of early Welsh industrialisation and the recovery after that, when the coal was worked out in the 1790s. The ancient trees are an incredible survival from the coal mining devastation of the 1700s and were probably rejected for harvesting as timber because of their shape. I prepared a draft book on the woodlands a few years ago, and now may be the time to turn it into a real entity.

I used to take many groups into the woods to explore the woodland, let me know if you’re interested and I’ll put together a walk.

Above: My original manuscript. Maybe I’ll make it real.

Cilfái: The Importance of our History.

Who owns history?

Last Saturday, I talked about the history of Cilfái as part of our National Local History Month celebrations.

I had a packed room in the Central Library, not to see me… but to listen to the topic. Concern over losing our history and heritage is mounting as more threats from local Council plans get closer. I knew many of the audience, some of my old colleagues, heritage and environmental workers, and my past history teachers. There were a lot of local people as well who made an effort to come and sit in a warm teaching room on one of the hottest days of the year.

The combined years of experience in the room were amazing. People who had worked on the hill researched and cared for it, and a newer generation is taking on the challenge of future care. There was an unbroken chain of partnerships and friendships dating back to the pioneer historians Clarence Seyler and George Grant Francis.

The talk and the questions session afterwards led me to reflect on the history I was talking about. Much of the past fifty years of Cilfái history is not documented and runs a significant risk of being ‘reinterpreted’ by an unmindful local authority and a foreign tourism company. That risk of deliberate amnesia was one of the reasons I wrote the Cilfái volumes.

But who ‘owns’ the history? It is always an important question. In 1891, Oscar Wilde penned an often-quoted phrase, ‘The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it.’ Although Wilde was likely thinking more of fine art criticism, the statement holds up in modern times with the revision of colonialism and racism prominently featured in research and popular histories. I’m part of that process as I talk of the environmental pollution and ecocide that accompanied the explosion of industrialisation and exploitation in the Swansea Valley.

As good as the Wilde observation is, I felt I was always led by this statement from George Santayana in 1905…’ Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ I suppose the ‘remembering’ or ‘forgetting’ can be both wilful and accidental. In the past month, I have had conversations with senior Council officers over Cilfái, where officials were adamant that records and land titles were entirely in order concerning the hill (and officially stating that was the case) whilst not checking anything about the truth and validity of those statements. The main reason behind their indolence was an intention to wilfully ignore the hill’s history. After my pushback, the senior planning officer had to retract those silly statements. The worst part of the episode was the inherent untruths and misrepresentation of vague facts advanced by Council employees who may be qualified but are rarely experienced. The injured parties are us as the public.

In books and talks about the history of Cilfái, I have tried to open ownership of our history to the broader public to combat the apparent desire of some to shut down debate, consultation, and knowledge. It is also important to remember that some of the most vocal Facebook warriors in unquestioning support for foreign tourism company plans have never been on the hill.

Above: Coal mine workings on Cilfái after 40 years of uninterrupted recovery. The Council and the foreign tourism company want us to believe this is worthless and they can do better. Really?

Ecological Monitoring: My complete protocol

This is my protocol from my civil service days. I used this (in whole or part) to educate, plan, or review monitoring programmes. Monitoring is hard to plan and very hard to do. In the UK, funding is often rewarded for a ‘project’ but the concept of understanding whole life costs is rarely appreciated. The money wasted on community lottery funding schemes is heartbreaking as projects are devised, money spent, and then there is no conception of maintenance or longer-term costs. Locally, I know of over £3m in lottery funding that has been wasted in ill conceived schemes with no oversight and unqualified charities signing cheques with no regard for quality or care.

As a Gateway Reviewer I was often brought in too late in a failing scheme, and my role then was merely to record the errors and failures. If we had been brought in at strategic planning or business case, it was better.

This plan was my basic script for programme oversight and I found I could frequently reverse engineer it to interpret what had gone wrong or explain how a programme failed.

I experienced three types of monitoring:

  1. Curiosity or passive monitoring. As I often undertake on Cilfái, and became the output in Cilfái: Woodland Management and Climate Change.
  2. Mandated monitoring. Imposing a requirement on a programme as part of their funding and appraisal system.
  3. Question-driven monitoring. The dreaded ‘research question’ approach of many academic bodies, often a waste of talent and time and merely to get a tick in a box. This is the stuff that is funded, completed, and locked away for ever. The best use of resources is through good quality research questions. However, I used to read questions that were long and incomprehensible…so how do you answer them…or better yet learn from them?

As a reviewer for government, I saw monitoring programmes that were ineffective or failed completely. It doesn’t help that many in the biodiversity sector see monitoring as a ‘management activity’ which is unrelated to scientific research.

The failures I saw

  1. Short-term funding preventing planning. Question-driven monitoring pushed staff to plan backwards…data first, question later. Also, data management was often dreadful with no structure or futureproofing for reviewers. A monitoring timescale can be a decade…who stays around for ten years on a program in biodiversity? Nobody…which makes succession planning vital, but never done. Loss of key personnel and the corporate amnesia that follows was harmful for staff and quality, but often treasured by politicians and managers who want a predecessor to own mistakes.
  2. The Shopping List approach. An impossibly long list of monitoring topics instead of a sharp defined monitoring objective. It is backlog planning in programme speak.
  3. Failure to agree on what to monitor. Often politicians and managers want career-enhancing metrics…not realities.
  4. Flawed assumptions. A very human desire to compare one set of data to something elso or associate with something else that looks good, but has incompatible data. The temptation to ‘salt’ data on key metrics (e.g. bats, reptiles, invasive speciers) was overpowering. An overclaim is more likely to get published etc.

It is a big graphic, so you may need to enlarge it.