Welsh Journals

Book Reviews and Short Notices COPPEROPOLIS. LANDSCAPES OF THE EARLY INDUSTRIAL PERIOD IN SWANSEA, by Stephen Hughes. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, 2000. x + 358pp illustrated. £ 38.30. Such is the outstanding quality of this volume, both in its physical appearance and in the superb quality of the scholarship it contains, that it is difficult to avoid the use of immoderate language in one's praise of it. It is a sumptuous volume, produced to the highest standards of book production that we have come to expect of its publisher. The dust-jacket immediately arouses one's expectation of what lies within. It is a reproduction in colour of a bird's-eye view of the lower end of the town of Swansea, and it is not difficult in imagination, and with the aid of a trade directory, to traverse the town along its main streets, travel into or from its various railway stations, and wander along the crowded wharfs of the port. The map makes plain the configuration of docks, waterways, railway lines and dry docks, along with the wealth of industrial undertakings which together proclaimed the economic importance of the place in its prime. Such evocations of the town and its hinterland are continued throughout the book in an extraordinarily rich series of illustrations (some in colour), maps and schematic drawings. These latter are extremely valuable and elucidate a text which might otherwise be difficult to follow. Some of the illustrations are familiar: less familiar are the photographs of sites as they now appear or under which they now lie, like the Clyndu Level of Robert Morris which now lies under the traffic island at the south end of Morriston, or the copperworks under St Paul's Church. There are clear and well-drawn maps of all the key places in the lower Swansea Valley along which the copper industries developed from the eighteenth century onwards until their decline and disappearance in these latter years. The maps and other illustrations are of crucial importance in the author's narrative, and they will be invaluable as other historians seek to understand the physical growth of the town and richness and maturity of its inner life.