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being. This is industrial archaeology of a very high order, and the reader will understand what the author had in mind when he referred earlier in the book to developments at Landore as a palimpsest of developments in the remainder of the Valley as a whole. Here, in this chapter, with its careful chronologies, the successive layers are brought to light. One final observation deserves to be made. This particular reader is not an industrial archaeologist, or indeed any kind of archaeologist, but writing as one whose main interest is in social history it is a pleasure as well a duty to declare that the book is also a major contribution to social history, and as such I recommend it warmly to readers of Morgannwg. Ieuan Gwynedd Jones, Aberystwyth THE BUILDING INDUSTRY IN THE UPPER SWANSEA VALLEY AND ITS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RAMIFICATIONS, c.1750- 1975, by R.O. Roberts and J. Elizabeth Hall. Edwin Mellen Press, 2000. vii + 186pp. 10 figs. £ 39.95. In 1972 C.I.L. Homes Ltd, a building firm of Caergwrle, near Wrexham, approached the Department of Economics in the then University College of Swansea with a request for a history of their subsidiary, David Davies & Son of Alltwen, Pontardawe. The project, which might have appeared rather daunting, given the almost complete lack of original records from before 1947, was undertaken by R.O. Roberts, at the time a senior lecturer in the department. Funds from C.I.L. Homes made it possible to employ Elizabeth Hall as his research assistant. The first draft was completed in 1975, but by that time Davies & Son had virtually ceased trading and so for over twenty years the manuscript languished unpublished. Eventually the Edwin Mellen Press stepped in and undertook publication as part of their series, 'Welsh Studies'. The original version has been updated where necessary, including considerable changes made during 1997 and 1998. Davies & Son were based in Alltwen. Whilst some contracts were undertaken farther afield, the bulk of their work was carried out within the upper Swansea Valley, which for present purposes is taken to be the