Recommended Reading
Suggestions for recommended reading if you want to learn more about the Welsh copper industry and related topics. People and organisations within the Copper Project partnership have authored a number of these titles.
Robert Morris and the First Swansea Copper Works, c. 1727-1730
Edited by Louise Miskell, 2010
In 2010 Dr. Louise Miskell of Swansea University published the first scholarly edition of this classic eighteenth-century text chronicling the pioneering phase of Wales's copper industry.
"It reveals the remarkable efforts of pioneering industrialist, Robert Morris, who built a successful business in the face of seemingly insurmountable problems: how to move raw materials around with virtually no road network; how to pay workers' wages with no banking facilities, and how to overcome the hostility of rival firms in a highly competitive trading environment.
The story is told by Robert Morris junior, son of the founder of the Morris industrial empire. He was a man with a colourful personal life but little direct experience of industry, yet he succeeded in preserving, direct from his father's letter-books, an account of three crucial years when the business was brought from the brink of financial ruin to a position of strength and security."
Publication and ordering details
Published 2010
ISBN 0-9553387-3-5 and 978-0-9553387-3-1
Price: £18.00 Members’ price: £15.00
Order from the South Wales Record Society
Slave Wales: The Welsh and Atlantic Slavery, 1660-1850
By Chris Evans, 2010
In 2010 Prof. Chris Evans of the University of Glamorgan published a seminal study on Welsh involvement in the Translatlantic Slave Trade. The presence of copper looms large as Prof. Evans describes the various interconnections between the Welsh copper industry and slave trade of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
"Subjugation and oppression in Wales are terms traditionally associated with the treatment Welsh natives endured at the hands of the Romans, and later, the invading Normans and Anglo-Saxons. Yet Wales, like many regions in Europe, played its own part in the enslavement of Africans and its industries actively contributed to the slave trade – the blood money of which helped change the Welsh landscape when they were invested in new industries and lavished on country mansions.
The reader is taken on a journey from Anglesey to Trinidad and covers the years 1650 to 1850, from Wales’ more sinister involvement in slavery to its pivotal role in abolishing it."
Publication and ordering details
£24.99 | HB| 9780708323038 | 160 pages | 216x138 mm
£19.99 | PB
Order from University of Wales Press
Copperopolis: Landscapes of the Early Industrial Period in Swansea
By Stephen Hughes, 2000
Stephen Hughes of the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales is an international expert on industrial heritage. In this classic study of industrialisation in Swansea, archaeological and historical evidence is placed in their national and global contexts to explore why Swansea became the centre of the world's historic copper industry.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Measurements in this volume
1 – The Industries
2 – Patterns of Transport & Power
3 – ‘Copper-men, Colliers & Mechanics’
4 – Masters & Men: Dynasties & Dwellings
5 – The Institutions of the Copper Townships
6 – Landore
7 – Conclusion
Select Bibliography & Abbreviations
Index
Read a review of Copperopolis by Matthew Griffiths for the Civic Trust for Wales
Publication and ordering details
ISBN: 1-87118-427-4
Cover: Softback
Size: 240 x 270mm
Pages: 358
Illustrations: 339
ISBN: 1871184274
Price: £20.00
Postage: £0.00
Down the Memory Lanes of My Hafod
By J. Ramsay Kilpatrick with Felicity Kilpatrick, 2008
Felicity Kilpatrick is an historian whose personal journey to learn more about her father's, Ramsay Kilpatrick, experience in the copper industry in Swansea led to the poignant memories explored in this book.
"Down the Memory Lanes of My Hafod is a collection of memories of a Swansea childhood in the Hafod of the 1930's and an apprenticeship in the closing years of Swansea's once great copper industry in the 1940's. Told in his own words by J Ramsay Kilpatrick, Down the Memory Lanes of My Hafod offers a glimpse into a world that is already lost and a time that is almost forgotten.
With historical notes and additional research, Ramsay's recollections of Swansea are a walk down the memory lanes of his Hafod. Beginning with his early memories of life in Gerald Street with his grandmother and his reluctant attendance at Hafod School, Ramsay recalls a life playing on the streets with his pals and roaming the tip, the largest slag heap in Wales and playground for generations of Hafod children."
Read more about Down the Memory Lanes of My Hafod
Publication and ordering details
Paperback: 178 pages
Publisher: Worktoad Publications (Nov 2008)
ISBN-10: 0956000606ISBN-13: 978-0956000606
£7.95
A Short History of the Hafod Copperworks
By Richard Porch, City and County of Swansea
This booklet is the most accessible historical guide to one of the most important copperworks in Swansea. It was written to inform Swansea Council's Heritage Interpretation Strategy for the regeneration of the Tawe Riverside Corridor.
"The Short History of the Hafod Copperworks booklet documents the site's past from 1810 to 1924 and catalogues its surviving visible remains.
A selection of statistics looking at areas such as sailing tonnage figures and trade are also included."
Publication and ordering details
£5 from
Read A Short History of the Hafod Copperworks online
Copper Kingdom: Parys Mountain and Amlwch's Port
By Philip Steele and Robert Williams for Amlwch Industrial Heritage Trust, 2010
The 'Copper Kingdom' emerged during the late eighteenth century on Ynys Môn or the Isle of Anglesey. At its heart were the Mynydd Parys copper mines, once the world's biggest producers of copper ore. This fully illustrated short booklet provides accessible information about copper mining in Wales and the maritime history that went with it, particularly the growth of the port of Amlwch.
Publication and ordering details
Paperback: 32 pages
Publisher: Amlwch Industrial Heritage Trust (1 Jan 2010)
ISBN-10: 0956388507ISBN-13: 978-0956388506
Product Dimensions: 24 x 16.6 x 0.4 cm
At a glance reading list from the project partners
[Hand list to be added shortly]
