• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Swansea Museum

  • English
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • Visit Swansea Museum
    • Boats and ships on display
    • Swansea Museum Collections Centre
    • Tramshed
    • Staff Contacts
    • Friends of Swansea Museum
    • Join our mailing list
  • Our collection
    • Art UK
    • Egyptian artefacts
    • Transport
    • Nautical objects
    • Finds from Swansea and Neath
    • War time Swansea
    • Donating an item to Swansea Museum
  • Swansea – a brief history
    • Archaeology
    • Industry
    • The Sea
    • Mumbles Train
    • World War Two
    • Old houses and places
  • What’s on
    • Exhibitions
    • Events
    • Past exhibitions
  • Museum shop
  • Learning
    • School Visits
    • Community Outreach
  • Blog
You are here: Home / What’s on / Past exhibitions / Copperopolis

Copperopolis

The Beginning of the Copper Industry

View of Hafod Copper Works - James Harris Snr. (Glynn Vivian Art Gallery). [Click to enlarge image]

The real growth of Swansea as an industrial centre is thought have commenced in 1717 on the initiative of Gabriel Powell.

In his post as steward to the Duke of Beaufort, he advocated that the copper industry was started in Swansea pointing out its accessibility and nearness to the port in Cornwall where copper ore was obtainable, local sources of cheap and suitable coal, and the harbour for transport.

The first copper works in Swansea were established in Landore in 1720 by Dr Lane and Mr Pollard, who had owned copper mines in Cornwall.

That year Swansea was described as “the best built and most cleanly town in all Wales”.

Find out more…

Copperopolis: Why Swansea?

 

Primary Sidebar

Search

Back on Track

Tramshed is now open
Wednesdays & Saturdays from 11am to 4pm.

Find out more

Blog

  • `The Record’
  • YMCA Jubilee Campaign Poster 1919
  • Board Game, to raise awareness of issues facing Young Carers
  • Prisoner of War Diary
  • Swansea Blitz Photograph
 

In ‘Swansea – A photographer’s Dream’ Colin Riddle’s pictures of Swansea in the 1960s represent images of a lost age.

 

Though much of what he photographed still exists for the keen historian to seek out, much has also disappeared.

     

Buy your copy

Tweets by swanseamuseum

Footer

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

City and County of Swansea

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2022 · Swansea Museum, City and County of Swansea

  • enEnglish