Tag: history

Cilfái: The History and Heritage Features on Kilvey Hill, Swansea ISBN 978-1-7393533-2-2

‘I don’t know why you all get worked up about it…there’s nothing up there’
(Swansea Council employee 2022)

This final Cilfái study was a bit more challenging than I first realised. I thought I had a good impression of the hill’s history and landscape. That was until I consulted the official records that were sadly inconsistent or often compiled with little knowledge or experience of the hill. This meant that this book and its lists were far more of a collaborative effort than the earlier books. This was no bad thing as I made or renewed friendships far and wide as spent more time on the hill connecting with the land and people. My grateful thanks and appreciation go out to all those who gave freely of their time to talk to me about their views and ambitions for the hill. This is particularly true of the features listed in the Modern History chapter, which, for many, is their whole experience of the hill. Unfortunately, the hill’s archaeological knowledge is poor, but that may be because there is more to discover, and we can be optimistic about that, as archaeologists frequently must be.


The Kilvey Woodland Volunteers are the lifeblood of the Cilfái community, and I’d like to thank Marian Francis for her support and commitment to all of us who work on the hill. Equally, the wider community who have planted so much and built The Glade and the Roundhouse and who contribute to so many well-being and craft activities on the hill have been truly inspiring in their unsung work on the hill for local people.
Once again, I need to acknowledge the help of Gerald Gabb in some of the Gwyndy story for me, and the support of library and archive services has been invaluable. The conversations with my old archaeologist friend John Andrew are always supportive. At the time of writing, I have no idea when or if the destruction threatened by Swansea Council will occur. I hope the lists in this book guide and support everybody who wants to care for and preserve what is on the hill. And yes, in answer to that nameless person who I quoted at the top of this page, there is plenty up there. You just have to care enough to look, and talk to the local community.

Above: Some of the heritage features of Kilvey, including some of the many bomb craters from World War Two.

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’.

Cilfái/Kilvey

I’ve now completed the information project for the Cilfái/Kilvey Hill landscape and surrounding area. The three books covering history, environment, climate change and heritage have all done phenomenally well. I’m sure that almost everyone who wanted copies of any or all of the books in the trilogy now has them. I remain amazed at the level of interest from the USA, Canada, and Australia!

I’ll be teaching Cilfái in several local places in 2025 alongside my World War Two books on South Wales and Swansea Blitz. I will also be offering open-air classroom sessions up on the Hill when the weather allows me to! I’ll post those details in the New Year.

I still have no idea about the future of the Hill, and I guess Swansea Council’s threatened destruction of the environment is about to enter the next phase in 2025. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to use the Hill and/or what survives of the woodlands as my outdoor classroom. A wonderful environment to examine heritage, climate change, woodland biodiversity and geology.

Interest in the history and geography of Cilfái continues to rise, and I’d like to thank the many educational (FE and HE) establishments and organisations for their continued support and engagement with me (and the outstanding Kilvey Woodland Volunteers) in seeking to understand the hill’s value for our local communities and as an educational and wellbeing resource.

One of the fascinating backstories of Cilfái has been the significance of the Hill in the history of coal exploration. Swansea has a particularly special place in the history of the British coal industry. Much of that rich history has been forgotten or discarded, but my next book will be about bringing that fantastic history back to life.

The Cilfái Trilogy. Bringing the uniqueness of the Hill to a wider audience!

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

New: Y Tân (The Fire): A History of Destruction, Swansea 1941

Proofs have now dropped. Printing has begun. Really pleased with this one as it originally started as an eight-page article!

Communication during the blitz

Most of the documents and other evidence about how Swansea coped during the war have not survived. As I said earlier, we have a lot of photographs, but understanding how people managed is harder to explore. My earlier post discussed the role of the ARP Controller Hywel Lang Lang-Coath. I looked through the available evidence to reconstruct the communication processes people needed to work through the awful problems the bombing caused.

One of the most important roles was the Air Raid Warden, who was expected to act as first-line help, assess the problems a bomb or fire had caused and ensure both the police and the ARP control knew about the problem. Wardens had to be special people, confident, capable, and able to prioritise problems on the spot. Nearly twenty per cent of wardens were women.

Below is my reconstruction of the communication flows between the warden and the fire control at Swansea Central Police Station and ARP Control in the Guildhall. You can see how complex the ARP role was and how many decisions Lang-Coath had to make. Once the telephone lines were destroyed, all messages were carried by teenagers on bikes or motorbikes, or even just running through the bombs and fires. A number of Messengers died trying to get their messages to the Guildhall.

Above: My reconstruction of the communications during the three nights’ blitz of February 1941. The blue shows the complexity of all the services that had to be sent to deal with a bomb explosion or fire.

You can buy the book here: Y Tân (lulu.com)

Coping with the air raids: The incredible achievements of Hywel Lang Lang-Coath

Various social media pages regularly post pictures of the Swansea Blitz damage. What is less well-known is how Swansea Council dealt with the disaster. As the local authority, it fell to the Council to lead the town’s civil defence. Whereas the police and fire brigade were already recognised in their duties, the new type of war on civilians needed a new set of approaches and a new organisation…Air Raid Precautions (or ARP).

Traditionally, the local authority’s head of administration, often called the Town Clerk, was appointed as the Controller of ARP. In Swansea, this esteemed role was held by the renowned Hywel Lang Lang-Coath. With over thirty years of experience and an intimate knowledge of Swansea, Lang-Coath, originally from Bridgend, wielded significant influence over the County Borough’s administration.

When the bombing came, Swansea’s Chief Constable dealt with the policing and fires, but Lang-Coath had to oversee everything else. This meant that he had to make the decisions on water supply, gas mains, telephone repairs, electricity cables, roads, sewers, demolition of bomb-damaged buildings, decontamination of food supplies, feeding bombed-out families, issuing emergency ration books and sending ambulances and first aid to bombed areas of Swansea. Many Swansea councillors didn’t like him and were jealous of his control and power. They wanted to be part of the process. Lang-Coath refused and focussed on saving lives and looking after the bomb victims and prioritised the emergency services to support people at the worst time in their lives. Many people can be grateful that Swansea councillors were prevented from playing petty party politics at the worst point in Swansea’s recent history.

Above: Lang-Coath seen between Winston Churchill and the Mayor Tom James
during his visit to the blitzed areas on 11 April 1941. The visit was pure political theatre for Churchill, and his entourage included the newly installed American Ambassador John Winant
and Averell Harriman who was President Roosevelt’s ‘Aid for Britain’ director. The
devastated scenes were used by Churchill to show the Americans the reality of
the bomb attacks and both men submitted their impressions directly back to the
President. Lang-Coath is in a typical pose, looking off-camera probably checking the
whole event was going smoothly. (Printed source).

Castle Gardens: The site of Ben Evans

Although we now know Castle Gardens as an ugly concrete space in the centre of town, that area of land has been central to Swansea’s history for centuries.

Originally part of the inner ward of Swansea Castle, the space has over the years held many buildings starting with the Plas House built in the 1300s. You can see a fantastic model of the area in Swansea Museum which was made in the 1820s. The streets that defined the Plas House block are part of Swansea’s long history. Temple Street to the north which once held the Three Lamps Inn, Goat Street to the west which held the original police station, and Caer Street to the south, which is (sort of) still there.

Pride of place has to go to Castle Bailey Street to the east which originally was a big space in front of the castle. By the 1890s, the site was the home of the various properties that made up the Ben Evans department store. Understanding the layout and contsruction of the store is an important part of understanding how it caught fire and burned so easily in February 1941.

For the book I reconstructed the various eras of building on the block to understand more about how the space was used. I used methods from the 1940s when architects and fire engineers were reviewing the incendiary attacks on Britain and looking to learn lessons to destroy German towns and rebuild Swansea after the war. Understanding Castle Gardens is a chapter in my book.

You can buy online here: Y Tân (lulu.com)

Above: Part of my reconstruction of the Castle Gardens block in central Swansea. By the 1840s, houses and shops were built on Castle Bailey Street and Caer Street. They built around the remains of the house and garden of the Plas House. Eventually, commercial pressures led to the destruction of the Plas and the construction of more houses and shops on Temple Street.
Above: A rare map of the Castle Gardens block in the 1850s.

Y Tân (The Fire): A History of Destruction, Swansea 1941

One of my longer-term projects. This originally started as a small article about the death of my grandfather, Jack Bowers. Jack died fighting fires in Castle Street on the third night of the February 1941 bombing of Swansea. It was a family tragedy and coloured the lives of my mother and aunt for the rest of their lives. My research went further and broader as I tried to understand the nature of the air attacks and what happened to people on the ground. I also looked at the history of the rubble that was left, including the history of Castle Gardens and Ben Evans the famous Swansea department store.

Here’s the blurb on the back cover:

“In World War Two, Swansea was regularly attacked by the German Air
Force. The worst attacks were over three nights in February 1941. The
bombs and fires transformed the centre of the town, and the author’s
grandfather was killed as a volunteer firefighter.
This book explores the events of the three nights, the loss of the
author’s grandfather, how the fire was used to destroy the town and the
consequences of the raids for the future of Swansea. Swansea Blitz was
an early example of a firestorm and became a template for attacks on
many European towns and cities in 1942 and 1943.

The author reconstructs the events of the three nights and includes
eyewitness descriptions from some of the people who worked to save
lives and property. The book also includes an analysis of the loss of
the Ben Evans department store and the detailed history of the land
we call Castle Gardens. With technical details of the bombs and
explosives that were used to attack the town and the history of the
bomb disposal teams that worked to save Swansea.


Based on meticulous research this fully referenced book examines the
vulnerability of the town to air attacks, the technical background of
the incendiary bombs, the events of the three nights of terror, the
ecology of the devastated town centre and the aftermath of
rebuilding.”

Details

Publication Date:Aug 5, 2024

Language:English

ISBN9781739353346

Category: History

Pages:160

Paperback Perfect Bound

Interior Color Color

Dimensions

Digest (5.5 x 8.5 in / 140 x 216 mm)