[1] Swansea (Welsh: Abertawe) occupies a position at the mouth of the River Tawe adjacent to an extensive bay at the western end of the Bristol Channel.
Part of the Lordship of Gower, established after the Norman invasion of Wales, it suffered episodes of destructive attack by forces of the displaced Welsh princes before developing into a prosperous market town and as a port with trading links across the Bristol Channel, as well as to France and Ireland.
The combination of a distinctively diverse, cosmopolitan, rapidly expanding population, a flourishing provincial science movement and a strong commercial and industrial base secured its pre-eminent and unique status in the urban history of early 19th century Wales.
[8] By the late 10th century, the region, including the land around the bay and the Gower, was part of the Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth under Maredudd ap Owain.
A turf and timber motte and bailey castle was erected in Swansea in 1106 and was assailed by the local Welsh ten years later (and several more times in the following century).
The medieval St. Mary's Church, founded in the 14th century, was the centre of religious life in Swansea until the reformation and the subsequent proliferation of protestant denominations.
By the mid-19th century nonconformist religious practice became the predominant form of worship, consolidated by an intensive period of chapel building and renovation.
[11] The small Roman Catholic population in Swansea expanded rapidly in the 19th century with the influx of Irish immigrant workers.
As the Jewish population grew and prospered funds were raised for the construction of a synagogue on the historic Goat Street (on a site now part of Princess Way in the city centre).
[13] The South Wales Coalfield reaches the coast in this region, and coal was being exported by the year 1550, along with great quantities of limestone, quarried in the Mumbles area and on Gower and in high demand as fertiliser.
It had a specific branch line into Clyne valley where Sir John Morris, one of the railway's owners, owned coal mines.
Despite some early journeys made by tourists, it was not until the 1860s that the railway began to carry passengers regularly, by which time it had acquired rails instead of tram plates.
This was naturally an unpopular development, and in 1843, Swansea inhabitants made their own contribution to the Rebecca Riots, burning the Ty Coch gate in St Thomas.
It was known that John Henry Vivian, one of the owners of the copperworks, was no supporter of workers' rights: he had blacklisted men involved in earlier disturbances.
And stretched they were, because it was equally clear that Swansea needed to be strongly garrisoned to cope with violent incursions by unemployed coal and iron workers and discontented country-people, as would Llanelli when the Gwendraeth Valley troubles reached their climax in the following two months.
[18]In this early part of the 19th century, the area which is now Brynmill, Sketty, the Uplands and the university campus was where several of the owners of the "manufactories" lived, in large park-like estates well to the west of the Tawe.
A contemporary report written by a doctor describing Swansea Valley speaks of a nightmare landscape, "literally burnt" where few plants would grow, dotted with lifeless pools, slag heaps, mounds of scoriae and smoke from the works everywhere.
[19] George Borrow, later to write and publish his Wild Wales, visited the town in the same year, describing it slightly less emphatically as "a large, bustling, dirty, gloomy place".
Writing in 1860, John Murray reports: To the traveller who crosses the Llandore bridge at night, the livid glare from the numerous chimneys, the rolling, fleecy, white clouds that fill up the valley beneath him, the desolate-looking heaps of slag on either side, might well recalls Dante's line - "voi che entrate lasciate ogni speranza" and records there are no trees, and instead of grass a yellow sickly growth of chamomile scarcely covers the ground.
Further changes to the docks were proposed, and the town authorities realised the potential grave effect on public health, particular in the riverside St Thomas area.
[26] There was no sewerage system in Swansea until 1857[26] and the water supply in areas above the reservoir level was "in many cases of a questionable character" (contemporary report quoted by Dean[26]).
A cargo of copper ore from Cuba was landed in exceptionally hot weather in September, and with it a number of infected mosquitoes.
Several of the landlords of Greenhill making great profits from their rents, and who required recompense for the loss of their properties, were local dignitaries, including Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn, MP.
In the ferrous sector, rapid growth in demand for tinplate - particularly in the USA - facilitated a local boom; the imposition of the McKinley Tariff in 1891 caused a significant fall in production, but tinplate continued to be a significant local economic activity into the first half of the 20th century,[27] with demand buoyant during the two world wars.
Rebuilding post-war was in typical British nineteen-fifties style and much of the result is regarded with high favour by neither residents nor visitors.