Tag: Pollution

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.