An outing in Copperopolis

John Peacock, who was the production director for my large reference works when I worked at Macmillan, and I have fallen into the habit of treating ourselves to explorations of assorted provincial towns and cities. Our visits have two objectives: to watch a match involving either Derby County (John’s hometown) or Ipswich Town (mine). Our most recent visit was to Swansea (known to its Welsh-speaking citizens as Abertawe, or Moth of the [River] Tawe), the second city of Wales.

The city sits by the sands of Swansea Bay, where the Tawe flows down from the Welsh hills, and housing climbs up the hills in the opposite direction. Our hotel was once the home of the Harbour Trust from which the industrialists, merchants and shipowners managed the trade of one of the world’s preeminent ports. Constructed in 1902, the building speaks of a city of great commercial confidence that was not reluctant to spend money to proclaim its status. Over the main stairs is a dome with eight stained glass roundels, representing the points of the compass. A large stained-glass panel facing the current restaurant proclaims with assertive pride the city’s role: navigation, circumnavigation, commerce.

Morgan's Hotel, formerly the headquarters of the Swansea Harbour Trust.

 

Our first stop was the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, founded by one of the preeminent copper families of Swansea. The founder of the family fortune was John Henry Vivian (1785-1855), who made Vivian & Son, one of the most successful copper businesses in the city. Indeed, possibly the world’s most important copper processor, for in the 18^th- and 19^th-centuries copper arrived by sea to Swansea’s port from Cornwall, Devon, the Americas, Africa and Australia. Hence Swansea/Abertawe’s nickname, Copperopolis. John Henry was not only a powerful businessman; he was the city’s MP for 23 years. His commanding statue stands in Ferrara Square (Swansea is twinned with Ferrara) by the marina. John Henry had four sons who inherited the firm, but Richard Glynn (1835-1910), the fourth son, was evidently not considered by his siblings suitable to be involved in the business. Instead, he devoted himself to cultural travel, collecting and philanthropy. He laid the foundation stone of his gallery, which opened the year following his death, to house his collection. The permanent collection consists mostly of Welsh landscapes, and other aspects of Welsh and Swansea’s life: a splendidly evocative painting of cockle pickers, for example.

Statue of John Henry Vivian, Ferrara Square, Swansea.

Copper made its way to Swansea because of the city’s strategic advantages: a large port, access to Welsh coal and a workforce of adult men and women, and of children. Copper was soon followed by the processing of other metals, such iron and tin plate (by the 1890s 80% of the world’s production) as the Swansea Waterfront Museum informed us. Swansea also processed Welsh slate and made ceramics. 

A rather rusty Trinity House lightship in Swansea Marina.

With the boom in metals came technology and new means of transport and communication: “In 1800 horseback was the fastest way to travel on land. A century later, most of the world had rail networks and trains travelling up to sixty miles per hour. This transformation in world history was initiated in south Wales with Richard Trevithick’s Steam Locomotive in 1804.”

Trevithick's locomotive (a replica).

“Coal wagons … began appearing on the UK rail network in the mid-nineteenth century. The Ocean Coal Company is painted on one side [of coal wagon in the museum] - in its heyday one of the foremost producers of steam coal in south Wales.”

An Ocean Coal Company wagon.

 Modern technology is also represented by a Stanhope Imperial hand printing press, made in Soho, London, in 1830. By 1879 a steam press was printing The Cambrian newspaper in Wind Street, close to the harbour.

The Stanhope handprinting press.

In 1910, Charles Horace Watkins claimed to have flown his Robin Goch (Red Robin), the first monoplane built in Wales, which he built between 1907 and 1909 of wood and canvas. The pilot’s seat was a kitchen chair and an egg timer was a navigation aid (I am not sure exactly how it functioned). A ball bearing in a cradle told the pilot if he was flying level. Two weights dangling under the plane, one 10 feet long and one 20 monitored the flying height. Watkins was nothing if not ingenious.

Watkin's Robin Goch.

Our final stop was the Swansea Museum, the oldest museum in Wales, founded in 1841 by the Royal Institution of South Wales. The displays have a decidedly Victorian flavour. There is a room of stuffed animals and bones:, including two condors, an American eagle, a cobra grasping a mongoose, and some rather sad desiccated and flattened skins of voles. A small room devoted to the prehistory of Swansea and its area includes mammoth tusks.

The stuffed animal and bones room.

But the star of the show is the Red Lady of Paviland. In the 1820s three local vocational archaeologists, Lewis Dillwyn, Lady Mary Cole and Miss Talbot of Penrice Castle, were alerted to the discovery of animal remains in Paviland Cave. They wrote to the Reverend William Buckland, a geologist at Oxford University, and in 1823 he conducted the first scientific cave excavation in Britain. He discovered the partial remains of the Red Lady (her bones stained by hematite in the cave). She has now turned out to be a young gentleman and the latest dating suggests he is 33,000-34,000 years old. He was buried with ochre and ivory offerings. His is the oldest ceremonial burial of a modern human in Western Europe.

The "Red Lady", now a gentleman.

The young receptionist at our hotel told us that, although damaged, the building fortunately survived the bombing raids of World War II. According to his account, one area nearby is locally known as the Red; so great was the destruction that all that was left of the buildings there was red grit and dust (and contaminants such as arsenic from the city’s metalworking past). This was a story told in more detail in a room in Swansea Museum. The most severe damage was inflicted by the Three Nights Blitz from 19-21 February 1941. The commercial heart of the city was razed, but the docks and factories, which were the targets of the raids, were mostly undamaged. And somehow the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, the Castle and Swansea Museum escaped harm.

Swansea Castle (photo John Peacock).

As for the football, John had a good night: Swansea 1- Derby 2.