Welsh Journals

mid-century case of a substantial copper smelter being established and developed from the proceeds of copper-mining in Chile. This works was at Port Tennant, near the entrance to the harbour in Swansea, and it was built in 1852 by Charles Joseph Lambert who was the son of the wealthy Charles Simon Lambert. The latter had been brought up in Lauterbourg near Karlsruhe and, from the 1820s onwards, had developed extensive copper-mining and some ore- reduction works in the province of Coquimbo. He had also arranged the export of Chilean ores to Swansea, especially through the shipping and importing firm of Henry Bath & Sons. The connection with the latter was cemented through the marriages of C.J. Lambert and his sister to a daughter and son of Henry Bath. Furthermore, C.J. Lambert lived mainly in Chile and his brother- in-law, Edward Bath, managed the copper works at Port Tennant. No information is available about the capital, or about any partnership, involved in building and operating the concern in Swansea. It is known, however, that C.S. Lambert left almost £ 900,000 when he died at his mansion in Alltyferin, Llanegwad, near Carmarthen in 1876, and that in 1904 the Swansea Harbour Trust paid £ 185,000 in compensation to the firm when it took over Lambert's works and the site for the building of the King's Dock [8]. As already mentioned, makers of and traders in copper and brass products formed a second category of business leaders engaged in the smelting. By about 1840, however, the share of the activity accounted for by partnerships of such persons had become small: indeed, some of the firms of this kind had by then been disbanded. (Individual non-ferrous metal merchants were nevertheless prominent in some of the third class of smelting enterprises those embracing people of diverse economic interests which is discussed below.) Reference has already been made to one firm which clearly belonged to the second group: that of Percivall and others who, during the second quarter of the eighteenth century, set up the White Rock Copper Works near Swansea, which was one of the main smelting establishments for over a hundred years. Upon the death of Joseph Percivall in 1764 the firm was reconstituted as John Freeman & Copper Co., and its main proprietors in 1796 were "John Freeman of Letton,