Sweyn’s Ea (Sweyne’s Eye or Inlet), Aber Tawe—or Swansea, as we modern English call it—is not what it was when Sweyne the King and Rover was wont to come hither as a base for his forays into the vales of South Cambria. Still, it can, if it cares to, brag stoutly of its ancient enlistment in the service of carbon. In 1305 it received a charter from William de Brews (Breos), great-grandson of the famous Lord Marcher, “to have pit coal.” That was beginning an industrial career early indeed. Four centuries later, in 1709, its jurisdiction as a port extended from Oxwich, in the Gower peninsula, to Chepstow—of course, including the then unborn and unthought—of Cardiff. It began to smelt copper in 1564, thanks to a charter given by Queen Elizabeth; and it is to copper and shipping, quite as much as to its position at the mouth of a great coalfield (estimated still to hold 19,200,000,000 tons of fuel underground), that Swansea owes its fine fortunes and its population of about a hundred thousand.
It seems an ungracious thing to say, but Swansea is apparently somewhat hampered by its antiquity. In the struggle for supremacy with Cardiff, it has not had Cardiff’s free hand in the matter of laying out a new town; nor, one may add, quite that powerful vigour of youth which carries all before it. Hence, it has already been left behind. The Duke of Beaufort is not such a potentate in Swansea as the Marquess of Bute in Cardiff; yet he stands to this city somewhat like the Marquess to Cardiff. It was a Duke of Beaufort who cut the first sod of the North Dock, or Town-Float, in 1852; and his Grace has large representation in the Swansea Harbour Trust, which has charge of the city’s port affairs. The late Lord Swansea, speaking on behalf of this Corporation, once said: “Swansea, you may depend upon it, is destined to become the Ocean Port of England.” Cardiff, at any rate, laughs such words to scorn, and even a layman of England may be allowed to think the prophecy over-sanguine. The North Dock has an area of 14 acres, and is “connected with a half-tide basin of two and a half acres by a lock 160 feet long and 50 feet wide, having at its seaward entrance gates of 60 feet, with a depth of 23 feet over the sill at spring-tides and 16 feet at neaps.” This is, of course, but one of Swansea’s docks, and by no means the most important of them. Cardiff’s docks are undoubtedly finer than Swansea’s, with more gigantic fitments.
Swansea, though ancient, possesses few relics of its past. The castle tower, in the main street, with a clock set in it, is the chief of them. In the large hall of the Royal Institution of South Wales—one of Swansea’s many meritorious establishments—may be seen divers drawings and engravings of the city one, two, and three centuries ago. In all of them the castle towers stand up as if they still had the feudal faith strong in them. Green, pleasant, wooded hills form the invariable background. How changed the landscape now! The green hills are gone; cut bare and covered with mean mechanic tenements or smoking manufactories. On the summit of the most conspicuous of them are a few gaunt walls, which by night may, with the help of a glamorous moon, come near being deceptively picturesque. This is the so-called Morriston Castle, three miles north of the city, yet with the black suburb of Morriston at its feet, an active contributant to Swansea’s fortunes. The “castle’s” history is brief and ignominious. A hundred years ago Sir John Morris, a maker of tin plates, who gives his name to the suburb, erected a lofty and large building on this breezy hilltop, for the accommodation of four-and-twenty of his workmen and their families. Healthier homes these could not then have had within easy reach of their daily labour. But the gradient of the hill soon wore out their enthusiasm, and, one by one, the families moved down on to the level. Then the lodging-house, being abandoned, fell slowly but surely into ruin. The ruin is now Morriston Castle.
Swansea’s castle has a more conventional history. It was built in its final form (which can only be conjectured from its remains) by Bishop Gower of St. David’s, in the fourteenth century. After the usual vicissitudes of disestablished castles, it still, until 1858, offered its dungeons for the confinement of recalcitrant debtors. In that year even these privileges were taken from it, and, ever since, civilisation has tried to crowd it out of existence. Its body is lost in the various buildings and workshops that have encroached upon it, but the graceful arcaded clock-tower remains. It gives a pretty touch to Swansea’s main street, which it commands.
Little more can here be said about Swansea, except that the visitor owes it to himself to leave the city (which was made a suffragan bishopric in 1890) as soon as possible, and make friends with the Mumbles. The five-mile curve of bay thither has been compared to that of the Bay of Naples. The comparison is not a modest one. Nevertheless, there is something uncommonly exhilarating about this Swansea Bay, with the red and white green-topped cliffs of the Mumbles at its south-western horn. You soon get out of reach of the fumes of the city’s copper and other metal works. The shipping of the Mumbles has a nice clean look after that at the mouth of the Tawe. And, save when the wind is north-east, the air is sweet here, as it is bound to be. Mumbles—or Oystermouth, as it used to be called—has an attractive old castle of its own, of the Decorated period. But it is precious chiefly to Swansea for its sea and the lighthouse islets at the extremity of the headland. The view hence towards the busy city, less than four miles across the water, is not gay. Tall chimneys and a dense canopy of smoke: such is the Erebus you behold from the pleasant Mumbles cliffs.
Ere moving up Tawe’s valley, it seems quite worth while to tell of Swansea’s connection with the fortunes of John Murray, the publisher. Gower the poet, Beau Nash, and other celebrities, owed their birth to this city; and it was while living here in 1806 that one Mrs. Randell compiled the “Domestic Cookery,” for which John Murray paid her the solid sum of £2,000, and which, Dr. Smiles tells us, was very profitable to the young publisher, and helped in a great measure to establish his position. It may be added, also, that in the parish churchyard at the Mumbles lies the Dr. Thomas Bowdler who busied himself so strenuously with Shakespeare’s Plays, and gave to our dictionaries an awkward, ugly word.
MORRISTON.
The Tawe cannot be much more than twenty-five miles in length, from its source in the lakelet on the Brecknock Van, or summit, of the Fforest Fawr Mountains, to the Swansea Docks. As fully half its course is through a colliery district, it may be supposed that its claims to beauty cannot be of the strongest. But the Neath river has taught us that these South Wales streams cannot be judged thus summarily. One must, therefore, proceed up the long valley of Tawe in the hope of charms other than those that emanate from pit-gear, long chimneys, and factories.