Tag: history

The Redevelopment of Cilfái

Yesterday (18 April 2024), Swansea Council took a first public step towards leasing or selling a large part of Kilvey Hill to a foreign tourist company. The decision was a milestone in a process started in secret in 2017. The years since have seen covert land assembly, including a particularly unpleasant land steal by Swansea Council, as politicians and staff work officially or otherwise to facilitate the plans of the foreign tourist company.

Our abysmal local government system’s callous, unthinking bureaucratic jargon describes the potential sell-off as a ‘disposal,’ as if the land were used tissue. This had happened before when previous generations and local councils enthusiastically embraced industrial development and regarded the destruction of nineteenth-century Kilvey as merely ‘collateral damage’ … a disposal problem.

The transformation of Swansea from an attractive resort to an industrial black spot was beautifully catalogued in a 1986 book called ‘The Brighton of Wales’ (Boorman 1986). Boorman traces the point of departure from unspoiled beaches to the Lower Swansea Valley industrial magnet. Now, the wheel has turned full circle as a desperate local authority, in acts of unbridled boosterism, refers to Swansea as a world-class tourism destination. I can only assume Councillors haven’t recently made that dangerous walk from Swansea railway station down the High Street.

There will be plenty of economic arguments for the developments to go ahead based largely on optimism and faith in the future. One thing is certain: the enthusiasts for the scheme and all the positive comments on those strange news sites don’t live there.

The Council and the local communities have a lot to be proud of regarding environmental recovery and the new uses of the urban woodlands on the east side. I wish the politicians would recognise this instead of chasing a handful of ice cream-selling jobs.

Boorman, David. 1986. The Brighton of Wales: Swansea as a Fashionable Seaside Resort, c.1780-1830 (Swansea: Swansea Little Theatre Company)

Below: The planned Skyline buildings. Incredibly, this picture is of part of Kilvey Hill that Swansea Council don’t actually own.

The Lower Swansea Valley Project and Pollution

Some of you know I spend a lot of time researching the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) intelligence activities over South Wales in World War Two. Eventually, the Luftwaffe bombed several towns, including many attacks on Swansea. The images the Luftwaffe took in preparation for the bombing attacks are often the earliest quality photographic surveys of industrial landscape we have. The main reason I collected such a large archive of photos is because of the landscape history in them. The fact I needed to understand fully the reasons behind the images was just a part of that original journety to understand the records. I’ll be publishing a large book on Swansea and the intelligence war in May. My original Eye of the Eagle book from 1993 is here in PDF.

Anyway, the pictures of the Lower Swansea Valley taken in 1940 and 1941 are an incredible record of the pollution and devastation of the industries in the valley. Eventually, the terrible pollution was ackowledged and a cleanup started in the early 1960s as part of the world-famous Lower Swansea Valley Project. I talk about the Cilfái part in the Project in Chapter Five of Cilfái: Historical Geography .

Below is one of the images in my collection from February 1941 when Luftwaffe airmen took photos of the whole town in preparation for the three nights of air attacks between 19 to 21 February 1941. In the middle of this image you can see the massive Hafod tip created by the Vivians industries. Further right are the even larger tips of the valley industries which destroyed the ecology of Cilfái and North-East Swansea. The White Rock tips are just right of centre. I don’t think there is a single tree in the upper half of this image.

The arrival of Copper in Swansea

The arrival of copper smelting in Swansea changed the nature of industrialisation and transformed the thousand year old coal industry into something new. The redevelopment of Hafod-Morfa and the branding of Swansea Copper as a commodity for tourism involves a lot of verbal gymnastics explaining to new generations and visitors what the copper industry was and why they should be interested in it all. And what it used to look like because it sure as hell doesn’t look like anything now.

It is a tough sell as almost every structure related to the industry was demolished in the twentieth century. The ruins were dirty, dangerous, toxic and were seen as ugly. Fast forward to today when clever marketers will be paid to dress up what is left into a ‘legacy’ tourism…anything is possible with the right amount of ‘Levelling Up’ money. Until it runs out.

Although we have two chimneys and a flavoured whisky business leading the charge to new tourism, there is one legacy of the copper industry that will never be erased…the pollution. I talk of a lot of this in Chapter Three of the Cilfái: Historical Geography book. The copper waste tips of the Lower Swansea Valley were famous on a European scale. most is still there but levelled out and (sort of) grassed over. It continues to inject zinc, cadmium, lead and mercury into the water table.

You can order a copy of Cilfái: Historical Geography on Kilvey Hill, Swansea direct from me, or you can go online to my Lulu site and get one printed immediately. Shop the Independent Bookstore | Lulu

Below: Slag from White Rock will often have the green stain of copper and the remains of the charcoal thrown onto the molten copper at certain times of the smelting process. The nastiest and most toxic tip is right next to the White Rock remains. The waste was thrown on to the meadow of Cae Morfa Carw and the conical pile of waste is like a gravestone over the remains of the pre-industrial landscape.

The Botany of Bombsites

In the early spring of 1941, two people followed in the footsteps of the bomb disposal teams, firefighters and council workers as they worked through the shattered ruins of Swansea’s blitzed town centre. The first was artist Will Evans, who was keen to document the chaos of ruins and the loss of the heart of the town. Evans left a legacy of vivid watercolours that are well-known. However, the other person was naturalist M. H Sykes, who is less well known. Sykes was a member of the Swansea Scientific and Naturalist Society (SSFNS), and she was a competent botanist with a keen eye.

The ’Three Nights’ Blitz’ inflicted grievous damage on Swansea.  The air raids and the ensuing fires created over 16 hectares of broken buildings and rubble at the heart of Swansea. It must have been horrendous.

In 1941, across the country, botanists realised that the blitzed landscapes would soon offer a unique opportunity to witness a comparatively rare phenomenon. This was the emergence of ‘spontaneous vegetation’, the pioneer plants that would arise on the broken brick and rubble. The phenomenon was first recorded amongst the ruins of London after the Great Fire in 1666. In 1941, expanses of ruins reappeared in London and blitzed towns such as Swansea along with the newly christened ‘bombsite flora’.

My article on the bombsite floras of Swansea is forthcoming in the next edition of Swansea History Journal published by the Royal Institution of South Wales http://www.risw.org/publications.htm

Coming soon.

Image: Eliot Hodgkin was one of the very few artists attracted to the contrasts between the brutality of the war ruins and the vegetation that covered them. This is an extract from one of his most notable blitz flora studies of ruins at St Paul’s in London in tempera. Hodgkin was a master of detail and captured the shape and form of many of the blitz plants at their best. The original is in the Imperial War Museum collection.