Tag: swansea

Swansea History and Our Geoheritage

Geoheritage is now becoming a broader term for our geographical and geological features that have significant scientific, educational, cultural, or aesthetic value. Swansea has an important place in the history of geological exploration and the development of the Welsh coal industry.

People who have participated in my many guided walks on Kilvey will already be aware of the value of the Kilvey Geoheritage sites and the contribution they make to the Biodiversity and Geodiversity of Swansea.

Globally, October is a month of celebrating and recognising the importance of the rocks and landscape underneath our feet. Swansea has more than most towns to be mindful of, as it is built on over a thousand years of coal mining history.

Geoheritage is now becoming a broader term for our geographical and geological features that have significant scientific, educational, cultural, or aesthetic value. Swansea has an important place in the history of geological exploration and the development of the Welsh coal industry.

People who have participated in my many guided walks on Kilvey will already be aware of the value of the Kilvey Geoheritage sites and the contribution they make to the Biodiversity and Geodiversity of Swansea.

Globally, October is a month of celebrating and recognising the importance of the rocks and landscape underneath our feet. Swansea has more than most towns to be mindful of, as it is built on over a thousand years of coal mining history.

Above: Foxhole Coal Staithes in the 1840s.

Following on from my recent book on Foxhole and the history of Swansea Coal, I’ll be giving a few guided walks and talks on broader aspects of Swansea’s incredible Geoheritage and Geodiversity.

On 4 October, I’ll be talking about the history of Swansea coal and the special place Foxhole on Kilvey has in the history of Welsh coal mining. My talk will be at Swansea Museum as part of the RISW and the Historical Association’s History Day 2025. I’ll also have copies of the Foxhole history book at a discounted price.

On 6 October, as part of UNESCO’s # InternationalGeodiversityDay, I’ll be leading a walk around the geological features of Kilvey Hill and explaining the unique place in Swansea’s history that Kilvey holds. The geological features of Kilvey have long been regarded as obscured or destroyed, but many have survived against all odds. Come with me and walk the land that was explored by Geology’s most famous local coal pioneers, William Logan and Henry De la Beche. Tickets will be available shortly. I’ll advertise them via Facebook and Eventbrite.

On 8 October, I’ll be at the Friends of Penllergare monthly meeting at Llewellyn Hall in Penllergaer. I’ll be talking about ‘Penllergare, Henry De la Beche, and early Geology in Swansea’. Lewis Weston Dillwyn was often at the centre of scientific and cultural events in Swansea. He was particularly prominent in the recognition of Swansea as a centre of research in the emerging science of Geology and the first understanding of the South Wales coalfields.

Above: Henry De la Beche. Pioneer geologist.

I’ll be doing a few more walks and talks throughout the month, and I’ll post here to let people know. If you want to know more contact mew for details.

I’ll also have my bookshop of all my current books in print at the History and Heritage Fair at the National Waterfront Museum on 27 September 2025.

A new orchard survey for Swansea and Gower

I’m just about to begin a data refresh of our local traditional orchard database. My original work was in 2012 as a contribution to the England and Wales survey that collected a massive amount of data about surviving orchards. For ~Swansea and Gower,  that original data is now outdated and in need of revision. This is particularly significant for the Gower National Landscape (formerly the AONB).

I’m just about to begin a data refresh of our local traditional orchard database. My original work was in 2012 as a contribution to the England and Wales survey that collected a massive amount of data about surviving orchards. For ~Swansea and Gower,  that original data is now outdated and in need of revision. This is particularly significant for the Gower National Landscape (formerly the AONB).

Above: A culinary apple crop from a tree that is over a century old in Swansea, August 2025.

Back in 2012, it was a hot summer, and I remember walking North Gower roads and lanes, ground-truthing previously identified potential survivals from satellite photos. It will be interesting to see what has changed. Originally, the oldest trees I saw in my surveys were culinary or cooking varieties, as in previous centuries, most apples were cooked in various forms in cakes, puddings, pies, pasties, and even soups. I saw dessert varieties start to appear as transport links to bigger markets became easier. The orchards of Northern Gower seem to have their origins in the arrival of the railway, allowing trouble-free transport to Llanelli and Swansea.

Although some academics have suggested that it is very rare to see apple trees older than a hundred years, I felt this may need correction, as I have seen some trees that, because of their location and size, are older than assumed. Much of Glamorgan’s apple industry was irreversibly damaged by massive imports of cheap Canadian apples via Cardiff and Swansea in the 1920s. The industry never recovered. In more recent decades, I see younger trees of dessert apples as people want to plant something easily consumed, and the recipes and practices of handling cooking apples have fallen out of fashion.

Equally, a new generation of consumers equate apples to cider, and I’d expect to see some ambitious investment in recently planted trees for juicing and cider.  However, the data I collect will confirm the picture.

Above: Gower orchards from the 2012 data. This is mixed with historical house data. There may possibly be a loose correlation between the two, although much altered by subsequent property development. Something to investigate!

Geodiversity and Cilfái

The theme for this year’s International Geodiversity Day, to be held on Monday 6th October 2025, will be ‘One Earth, Many Stories’. International Geodiversity Day was proclaimed by UNESCO in 2021, following a grassroots campaign by geoscience organisations around the world. Geodiversity is all around us, and includes the parts of nature that aren’t alive, like minerals, fossils, soils, and landscapes.

Geodiversity Day is a worldwide celebration to bring people together in promoting the many aspects of geodiversity, and its importance to society. This year’s theme is a chance for people to connect with geodiversity. Every landscape, every stone, and every fossil has a story to tell. Our planet is a record of history that dates back more than 4 billion years; one that can teach us about the origins of our natural environment and where we, as animals, came from.

As people, communities, and governments implement the Sustainable Development Goals, geodiversity provides a record of earth history that can help us prepare and respond to threats such as climate change. ‘One Earth, Many Stories’ encourages all of us to discover examples of geodiversity; in our landscape, in museums, in historic buildings; and delve deeper into the multitude of stories contained within planet Earth. It is hoped that geoscience groups around the world will organise events to make the stories of their local geodiversity more widely known.

As part of International Geodiversity Day, I’ll be leading a walk around the geological and historical treasures of Kilvey in Swansea. Kilvey played a central role in the pioneering work to understand the South Wales coalfield. The hill was the training ground of one of Geology’s most notable pioneers, William Logan, who was the first to map the Swansea coal veins and understand the arrangements of the coal beds and how they related to the surrounding Pennant Sandstone.

The hill has an incredible set of survivals from the early coal mining historry of Wales. The original coal face that Logan analysed and explored still survives, along with several medieval coal adits. There are also several fascinating sandstone rock exposures rich in plant remains, which gave the early coal prospectors of two thousand years ago the first clues that coal was present in these rocks.

Coal mining on Kilvey is a 1500-year-old industry and central to the history of Swansea.

Above: An early geology map of Swansea with ‘Kilvay’ in the middle covered in coal mines.
Above: A drawing of coal showing the intricate plant structures that can survive in our local bituminous coal. This drawing is from the original Memoir of Henry De la Beche (1841).

If you are interested in the history of Swansea coal, take a look at my recent bnook on the coal history of Foxhole on Kilvey

The Foxhole Coal Staithes, Swansea

The Foxhole River Staithes are a set of enigmatic structures on the banks of the River Tawe near the remains of the White Rick Copper Works. Although now hidden by trees and slowly deteriorating, they were once the centre of the incredible coal industry that dominated Kilvey and Foxhole in Swansea. This book describes the history of coal in early Swansea and explains the significance of the last remaining structures of the coal industry of early Swansea before the arrival of copper smelting in the 1730s

I completed my cheap photography project last month, and added it to my early Swansea coal history book.

The history of Swansea coal is being lost amongst all the noise and gravy train funding for the Hafod/Morfa Copperopolis story. My work on Swansea coal is meant to redress some of that imbalance and cast new light on a part of the Lower Swansea Valley that isn’t considered important.

The photogrammetry was a great success, completed for a few hundred pounds rather than the thousands claimed by local firms. The constraints were to use second-hand cameras and computers, and to provide imagery of a quality and level of detail that would prove useful. No drones were used as we found that they were adding a layer of costs and complexity that was distorting the value of what should be an extremely cheap and quick process.

After discussing the protocols with a couple of BIM colleagues, I looked at the protocols described in this 2011 paper (listed below). Despite being a little older than the average BIM work these days, the workflows were good, easily replicated, and I could learn how to use simpler, older cameras for the imagery.

There was a series of trials of various landscape and heritage features, ranging from riverside bollards, dock walls, and larger landscape features such as bomb craters and threatened landscapes. The larger subjects needed drone input, and so they were discarded, although some beneficial results were obtained for researching biodiversity and small-scale features which I’ll follow up in a later project.

The study subjects were the Foxhole River Staithes, which were of good size (typically about 8m wide, 3m high) and interesting construction. The photographic survey took just over three days, with about four thousand images collected. Office processing of the imagery took about three days.

Above: An ‘aerial’ view of one of the Staithe Structures reconstituted from ground photogrammetry, no drones, merely ground camera work.
Above: Another view of Foxhole Structure B. A series of stone retaining walls that originally had timber decking, allowing the loading of coal into various-sized river vessels. Built in the early eighteenth century, probably before extensive copper smelting had begun.
Above: Some of the mines and coal veins of early Swansea, discussed in the book.

The photogrammetry was included in a book giving a brief history of coal in Swansea and the significance of the Foxhole area in pre-industrial Swansea.

Fai, Stephen & Graham, Katie & Duckworth, Todd & Wood, Nevil & Attar, Ramtin. (2011). Building Information Modeling and Heritage Documentation.

“The Foxhole River Staithes are a set of enigmatic structures on the banks of the River Tawe near the remains of the White Rick Copper Works. Although now hidden by trees and slowly deteriorating, they were once the centre of the incredible coal industry that dominated Kilvey and Foxhole in Swansea. This book describes the history of coal in early Swansea and explains the significance of the last remaining structures of the coal industry of early Swansea before the arrival of copper smelting in the 1730s. The story of the coal mines of Swansea, the coal export trade and the ships that visited eighteenth-century Swansea are all described. The book also includes the results of photogrammetric surveys of the surviving structures to give the story of the true significance of the Foxhole Staithes and their place in Welsh history.”

Foxhole River Staithes and Swansea Coal 1300-1840https://www.lulu.com/shop/nigel-a-robins/foxhole-river-staithes-and-swansea-coal-1300-1840/paperback/product-656z44z.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Details

Publication Date Apr 19, 2025

Language English

ISBN9781739353353

Category History

CopyrightAll Rights Reserved – Standard Copyright License Contributors

By (author): Nigel A Robins

Specifications

Pages 104, Binding Type Paperback, Perfect Bound, Interior Color Color

Dimensions US Trade (6 x 9 in / 152 x 229 mm)

More on Swansea Valley photogrammetry

For many projects in restoration and landscape, there has been a tendency to overemphasise gee-whiz graphics at the cost of scholarly historical analysis. The project here puts the technology back where it belongs, in the background of support for investigation and analysis.

The rapid development and delivery of this project is almost complete. The proof of concept of quick and cheap photogrammetry is complete, and we explored various features of various sizes. Budget constraints in the broader London-based programme meant that the planned exploitation phase won’t take place there. The plan was to explore some large, immoveable sculptures and statues at risk of damage by surrounding building renovation. Instead, I’ll work in South Wales on a series of local history and geography projects.

Costs were remarkably low (which we believed they would be). It is satisfying to use new technologies to reduce costs and fight against the gradual cost inflation and scope creep of using these types of technologies in small history or geography projects. In researching the business case for this, I learned of several local authority projects where high costs for archaeological surveys, often incorporating expensive drone surveys and extraordinary labour costs, skewed project delivery budgets almost to the cancellation of the projects. I experienced the same issues working on the restoration of the Palace of Westminster, where incredible finances and resources were expended on expensive lidar and photogrammetry products that were who;;y unsuitable for the problems and frequently misled managers into thinking that such products were essential elements of the restoration at RIBA Stages 1 and 2 .

For many projects in restoration and landscape, there has been a tendency to overemphasise gee-whiz graphics at the cost of scholarly historical analysis. The project here puts the technology back where it belongs, in the background of support for investigation and analysis.

Above: A test scan of a significant rock exposure on Cilfái Hill in Swansea. Upper Carboniferous Pennant Sandstone with a forty-degree dip north. This is an exposure in an area where William Logan and Henry De la Beche discussed the general stratigraphic layout of the South Wales Coalfield. Some of the exposures have copper nails struck into the rock, which may have been part of Logan’s levelling work in the late 1830s. These exposures are at risk of destruction by Swansea Council’s tourism redevelopment of the area, so it is good to get a good scan of them before they are destroyed.
Above: An old coal loading dock in the Lower Swansea Valley, known as a ‘Staith’. Probably dating from the 1740s, this was built to make loading coal into ships in the river easier. The coal came down the east-side tramways and later the canal. This is a scheduled ancient monument but has been neglected by Swansea Council and is now deteriorating. Ironically, the monument’s destruction has been accelerating because of the encroaching woodland and the dumping of industrial waste. This structure is incredibly rare; there may only be two others in Wales, and they are also in the Lower Swansea Valley. Again, this is a low-cost photogrammetric scan taken as an emergency whilst extensive finances are expended elsewhere in the Valley on Council-led projects.

Costs are kept low by avoiding the use of drone technologies, using older and previously-used professional cameras bought cheaply on Ebay, and new software costing a few hundred Euros.

The next steps are researching the history of coal industry structures in the valley, followed by some investigation of some World War Two remains on Cilfái.

My next illustrated talk

This will be at the Local Studies Room at Swansea Central Library on Saturday, 22 February 2025 at 2.00 pm. This will be one of Gwilym’s local studies talks in the afternoons. (https://www.swansea.gov.uk/centrallibraryevents).

Above: The Lower Swansea Valley as seen by German bomber cre3ws in February 1941

I’ll talk about the three nights of air attack that transformed the town centre. Based on my research for my Y Tân: A History of Destruction, Swansea 1941.

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.

I’ll have both Y Tân and Eye of the Eagle books for sale at a discount price of £10.00 each. The new editions won’t be available on Amazon or local bookshops.

History of the Luftwaffe Reconnaissance and Intelligence during the air war over South-Wales 1939-1941. Over 130 maps, illustrations, and images, many in colour. Individual biographies of the Luftwaffe intelligence of Newport, Cardiff, Penarth, Barry, Port Talbot, Llandarcy Oil Refinery, Briton Ferry, and Swansea. Explanatory text and translation of original Luftwaffe intelligence records. Annex describing intelligence records, U-boat operations off Swansea and Magnetic Mines. Explanatory text covering the role of intelligence and reconnaissance and explanations of why the Welsh ports were bombed in the Blitz attacks of 1941. Illustrated with Luftwaffe intelligence maps and documents gathered from over 10 years of research. Fully academically referenced.

Swansea Blitz, 1941: Fighting the incendiary bombs

Incendiary bombs were heavily used by all World War Two air forces to attack civilians. Swansea was attacked on several occasions with large numbers of incendiary bombs, which eventually caused complete destruction of most of the town centre.

Incendiary bombs to specifically attack houses were a German invention from World War One. Still, it was in the middle years of the Second World War that they really became a favourite weapon of air forces.

The incendiary bomb used to attack Swansea was known as the ‘Elektron‘. a slim tube of aluminium and magnesium with an incendiary filling. The little bomb had a hard nose designed to penetrate a slate roof and settle in the attic, where it would gradually start a fire. The Swansea Civil Defences and auxiliary firemen learned various ways to deal with the bomb, but it was civilians, including women and children, who tackled most of the burning bombs.

Below is a page from Y Tân: A History of Destruction, Swansea 1941, with pictures from a civil defence manual showing how to tackle a burning Elektron bomb. It was important for morale to show a woman dealing with the bomb and hundreds of bombs in Swansea were extinguished by women with sandbags and stirrup pumps.

The full story of Swansea dealing with incendiary bombs during the Three Nights’ Blitz is told in the book.

Kilvey Hill and its Second World War archaeology

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.

If you want to know more about Swansea and World War Two you can read my book on German Intelligence and the bombing of the South Wales Ports 1040-1941.

Or if you want to know more about the Swansea Blitz, you can read Y Tan: A History of Destruction, February 1941.

When it is considered inconvenient, the archaeological history of World War Two is easily and regularly destroyed in Wales.

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…