Tag: swansea

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 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.