Daniel Lleufer Thomas

“ In 1581 Queen Elizabeth granted a confirmatory charter to the mayor and bailiffs direct without reference to the lord of the castle. The town was treated as a borough by prescription until 1608, when James I. confirmed its status by express incorporation, adding also to its rights of self-government, and granting it a third fair (on the 30th of November) . In 1687 the town surrendered this charter to James II., who in a substituted one, which, however, was never acted upon, reserved to the Crown the right of removing any member of the corporation from office. ”

“ There are still large areas in the Rhymney Valley on the east, and in the districts of Neath and Swansea on the west, whose development has only recently been undertaken. In connexion with the coal industry, patent fuel (made from small coal and tar) is largely manufactured at Cardiff, Port Talbot and Swansea, the shipments from Swansea being the largest in the kingdom. Next in importance to coal are the iron, steel and tin-plate industries, and in the Swansea district the smelting of copper and a variety of other ores. ”

“ The earliest known form of the name is Sweynesse, which occurs in a charter granted by William earl of Warwick some time previous to 1184; in King John’s charter (1215) it appears as Sweyneshe, and in the town seal, the origin of which is supposed to date from about the same period, it is given as “Sweyse.” An attempt has been made to derive the name from Sein Henydd, the Welsh name of a Gower castle which has been plausibly identified with the first castle built at Swansea, but that derivation is etymologically impossible. ”

“ Glamorgan is in the S. Wales circuit, and both assizes and quarter-sessions are held at Cardiff and Swansea alternately. All the municipal boroughs have separate commissions of the peace, and Cardiff and Swansea have also separate courts of quarter-sessions. The county has thirteen other petty sessional divisions, Cardiff, the Rhondda (with Pontypridd) and the Merthyr and Aberdare district have stipendiary magistrates. There are 165 civil parishes. Excepting the districts of Gower and Kilvey, which are in the diocese of St David’s, the whole county is in the diocese of Llandaff. ”

“ While the bulk of the coal is sent to France and the Mediterranean ports, an increasing quantity of anthracite is shipped to Germany, and, in sailing vessels to the Pacific ports of America, patent fuel is largely sent to South America, whence return cargoes of mineral ores and grain are obtained, while Germany, France, Italy, Rumania, the United States and the Far East are the chief customers for tinplates. Over one hundred fishing-smacks and trawlers usually land their catches at the south dock, where there is a flourishing fish-market. ”

“ Pig-keeping is much neglected, and despite the mild climate very little fruit is grown. The average size of holdings in 1905 was 47.3 acres, there being only 46 holdings above 300 acres, and 1719 between 50 and 500 acres.
Mining and Manufactures.—Down to the middle of the 18th century the county had no industry of any importance except agriculture. The coal which underlies practically the whole surface of the county except the Vale of Glamorgan and West Gower was little worked till about 1755, when it began to be used instead of charcoal for the smelting of iron. ”

“ A steady decrease of the acreage under grain-crops, green-crops and clover has been accompanied by an increase in the area of pasture. Dairying has been largely abandoned for stock-raising, and very little “Caerphilly cheese” is now made in that district. In 1905 Glamorgan had the largest number of horses in agriculture of any Welsh county except those of Carmarthen and Cardigan. Good sheep and ponies are reared in the hill-country. ”

“ De Braose’s charter of 1305 bears some evidence to the importance of the shipping of Swansea even at that date, for by it there was granted or confirmed to the burgesses the right to take from the lord’s woods sufficient timber to make four great ships at a time and as many small vessels as they wished. Coal was even then worked in the district. Cromwell in his charter of 1655 recognized Swansea as “an ancient port town and populous, situate on the sea coast towards France convenient for shipping and resisting foreign invasions.” ”

“ Cardiff is also the terminus of both the Taff Vale and the Rhymney railways, the latter affording the London & North-Western railway access to the town. The Barry line from Barry dock joins the Great Western and Taff Vale railways at Cardiff, and the Cardiff Railway Company (which owns all the docks) has a line from Pontypridd via Llanishen to the docks. The Glamorganshire canal, opened in 1794, runs from Cardiff to Merthyr Tydfil, with a branch to Aberdare. The increase of the population of Cardiff during the 19th century was phenomenal ”

“ By a statute of 1535 Brecon was made the county town of the new shire of Brecknock, and was granted the right of electing one burgess to represent it in parliament, a right which it retained till it was merged in the county representation in 1885. A chancery and exchequer for the counties of Brecknock and Radnor were also established at Brecon Castle, and from 1542 till 1830 the great sessions, and since then the assizes, and at all times the quarter sessions for the county, have been held at Brecon. ”

“ The next formation is the Carboniferous Limestone which encircles and underlies the great South Wales coal-field, on the south of which, west of Cardiff, it forms a bold escarpment of steeply-dipping beds surrounding the Old Red Sandstone anticline. It shows up through the Trias and Lias in extensive inliers near Bridgend, while in Gower it dips away from the Old Red Sandstone of Cefn-y-bryn. On the north of the coal-field it is just reached near Merthyr Tydfil. ”

“ The total dock area of Swansea has thus been increased to about 147 acres with a total length of quays exceeding 3 m. The harbour docks and adjacent railways (which exceed 20 m.) are owned and administered by a harbour trust of 26 members, of whom one is the owner of the Briton Ferry estate (Earl Jersey) , 4 represent the lord of the seigniory of Gower (the duke of Beaufort) , 12 are proprietary members and 9 are elected annually by the corporation of Swansea. The trustees are conservators of the river Tawe and parts of Swansea Bay, and the pilotage and lighthouse authority of the district. ”

“ There is a further supply obtained from three reservoirs of a combined capacity of 513,000,000, constructed in 1866, 1874 and 1889 respectively in the Lliw and adjoining valleys, in the drainage area of the Loughor, about 10 m. to the north of Swansea.
Harbour and Commerce.—Swansea owes its commercial prosperity to its great natural advantages as a harbour and its situation within the South Wales coal basin, for the anthracite portion of which it is the natural port of shipment. It is the most westerly port of the Bristol Channel and the nearest to the open sea, only 35 m. ”

“ Scarcely anything but provisions are sold in the weekly market, the farmers of the district now resorting to the markets of Brecon and Hereford. There are good monthly stock fairs and a hiring fair in May. There is rich agricultural land in the district.
Hay was reputed to be a borough by prescription, but it never had any municipal institutions. ”

“ In 1901 about 50% of the population above three years of age spoke both Welsh and English, 71/4% spoke Welsh only, and the remainder English only. The ancient parish of Merthyr Tydfil has been divided into five ecclesiastical parishes (Merthyr, Cyfarthfa, Dowlais, Pentrebach, and Penydarran) and part of another parish (Treharris) . These six parishes form the rural deanery of Merthyr in the archdeaconry and diocese of Llandaff, and in 1906 had nine churches and fifteen mission rooms. ”

“ The Glamorgan county council has also a site of one acre in the park for offices.
The University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, founded in 1883, under the principalship of J. Viriamu Jones, for some time carried on its work in temporary buildings, pending the erection of the commodious and imposing building from the plans of Mr W. D. Caröe, in Cathays Park, where the registry of the university of Wales (of which the college is a constituent) is also situated. ”

“ The town grew up around the castle but never received a charter or had a governing body. In 1661 the corporation of Cardiff complained of Cardiff’s impoverishment by reason of a fair held every three weeks for the previous four years at Caerphilly, though “no Borough.” Its markets during the 19th century had been chiefly noted for the Caerphilly cheese sold there. ”

“ The South Bute dock of 501/2 acres, authorized in 1894 and capable of accommodating the largest vessels afloat, was opened in 1907, bringing the whole dock area of Cardiff (including timber ponds) to about 210 acres. There are also ten private graving and floating docks and one public graving dock. There is ample equipment of fixed and movable staiths and cranes of various sizes up to 70 tons, the Lewis-Hunter patent cranes being largely used for shipping coal owing to their minimizing the breakage of coal and securing its even distribution. ”

“ The very rapid increase in the demand for anthracite coal (for the shipment of which Swansea has practically a monopoly) soon necessitated still further accommodation and in July 1904 was begun the King’s Dock, which lies farther east and has an entrance direct from the bay. By means of the embankment made in connexion with it, 400 acres were reclaimed from the sea. It has an area of 68 acres, its lock measures 875 ft. ”

“ History.—The earliest known traces of man within the area of the present county are the human remains found in the famous bone-caves of Gower, though they are scanty as compared with the huge deposits of still earlier animal remains. ”

“ In 1851 the river was diverted eastward into a new channel (called the New Cut) and its old channel was locked and floated, thereby forming the North Dock with an area of 111/2 acres and a half-tide basin 500 yards long covering 21/2 acres. The Swansea Valley canal has a connecting lock with this dock, and on the island between the dock and the New Cut are patent fuel works, copper ore yards and other mineral sheds and large grain stores and flour mills. ”

“ The town owes its early industrial prosperity to the abundant ironstone and coal of the district, and it thus became at an early date the chief seat of the iron industry in Wales. Four great ironworks were established here between 1759 and 1782. ”

“ The district was one of the chief centres of the Methodist revival of the 18th century, the first synod of the Calvinistic Methodists being held in 1743 at Watford farm close to the town, from which place George Whitefield was married at Eglwysilan church two years previously. The church of St Martin was built in 1879, and there are Nonconformist chapels. Mining is now the chief industry of the district. ”

“ The corporation owns about 645 acres of land within the limits of the ancient borough. This consists mainly of land acquired under an Inclosure Act of 1761, but a small part is surplus land acquired in 1876–1879 in connexion with an improvement scheme for clearing a large insanitary area in the centre of the town.
The town is lighted with gas supplied by a gas company first incorporated in 1830 and by electricity supplied by the corporation. There is a good system of electrically worked tramways, 51/2 m. being owned by a company and nearly 6 m. ”

“ The textile factories are few and unimportant.
Fisheries.—Fisheries exist all along the coast; by lines, draught-nets, dredging, trawling, fixed nets and by hand. There is a fleet of trawlers at Swansea. The principal fish caught are cod, herring, pollock, whiting, flukes, brill, plaice, soles, turbot, oysters, mussels, limpets, cockles, shrimps, crabs and lobsters. There are good fish-markets at Swansea and Cardiff.
Communications.—The county has ample dock accommodation. The various docks of Cardiff amount to 210 acres, including timber ponds ”

“ The castle, which was probably built in Newmarch’s time and rebuilt by his great-grandson William de Breos, passed on the latter’s attainder to the crown, but was again seized by de Breos’s second son, Giles, bishop of Hereford, in 1215, and retaken by King John in the following year. In 1231 it was burnt by Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, and in the Barons’ War it was taken in 1263 by Prince Edward, but in the following year was burnt by Simon Montfort and the last Llewelyn. ”

“ The Drapers’ Company has given £15,500 towards building a library, in addition to previous donations to the engineering department and the scholarship fund of the college. The college has departments for arts, pure and applied science and technology, medicine, public health, music, and for the training of men and women teachers for elementary and secondary schools. Its library includes the Salesbury collection of books relating to Wales. Aberdare Hall is a hostel for the women students. The Baptist theological college of Pontypool was removed to Cardiff in 1895. ”

“ New school buildings were erected at a cost of about £10,000 in 1862, and these were enlarged at a cost of about £5000 in 1880. The chancel of the old Dominican chapel, dating from the 13th century, was restored in 1864, and is now the school chapel. There is also a Congregationalist theological college, built in 1869 at a cost of £12,000, and now affiliated with the university of Wales. ”