railway runs to Blaengarw, and the Neath and Brecon railway
(starting from Neath) joins the Midland at Colbren Junction. The
canals of the county are the Glamorgan canal from Cardiff to
Merthyr Tydfil (2512 m.), with a branch (7 m.) to Aberdare, the
Neath canal (13 m.) from Briton Ferry to Abernant, Glyn Neath
(whence a tramway formerly connected it with Aberdare), the
Tennant canal connecting the rivers Neath and Tawe, and the Swansea
canal (1612 m.), running up the Swansea Valley from Swansea to
Abercrave in Breconshire. Comparatively little use is now made of
these canals, excepting the lower portions of the Glamorgan canal.
Population and Administration.—The area of the ancient county with which the administrative county is conterminous is 518,863 acres, with a population in 1901 of 859,931 persons. In the three decades between 1831 and 1861 it increased 35.2, 35.4 and 37.1% respectively, and in 1881–1891, 34.4, its average increase in the other decennial periods subsequent to 1861 being about 25%. The county is divided into five parliamentary divisions (viz. Glamorganshire East, South and Middle, Gower and Rhondda); it also includes the Cardiff district of boroughs (consisting of Cardiff, Cowbridge and Llantrisant), which has one member; the greater part of the parliamentary borough of Merthyr Tydfil (which mainly consists of the county borough of Merthyr, the urban district of Aberdare and part of Mountain Ash), and returns two members; and the two divisions of Swansea District returning one member each, one division consisting of the major part of Swansea town, the other comprising the remainder of Swansea and the boroughs of Aberavon, Kenfig, Llwchwr and Neath. There are six municipal boroughs: Aberavon (pop. in 1901, 7553), Cardiff (164,333), Cowbridge (1202), Merthyr Tydfil (69,228), Neath (13,720) and Swansea (94,537). Cardiff (which in 1905 was created a city), Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea are county boroughs. The following are urban districts: Aberdare (43,365), Barry (27,030), Bridgend (6062), Briton Ferry (6973), Caerphilly (15,835), Glyncorrwg (6452), Maesteg (15,012), Margam (9014), Mountain Ash (31,093), Ogmore and Garw (19,907), Oystermouth (4461), Penarth (14,228), Pontypridd (32,316), Porthcawl (1872) and Rhondda, previously known as Ystradyfodwg (113,735). Glamorgan is in the S. Wales circuit, and both assizes and quarter-sessions are held at Cardiff and Swansea alternately. All the municipal boroughs have separate commissions of the peace, and Cardiff and Swansea have also separate courts of quarter-sessions. The county has thirteen other petty sessional divisions, Cardiff, the Rhondda (with Pontypridd) and the Merthyr and Aberdare district have stipendiary magistrates. There are 165 civil parishes. Excepting the districts of Gower and Kilvey, which are in the diocese of St David’s, the whole county is in the diocese of Llandaff. There are 159 ecclesiastical parishes or districts situated wholly or partly within the county.
History.—The earliest known traces of man within the area of the present county are the human remains found in the famous bone-caves of Gower, though they are scanty as compared with the huge deposits of still earlier animal remains. To a later stage, perhaps in the Neolithic period, belongs a number of complete skeletons discovered in 1903 in sand-blown tumuli at the mouth of the Ogmore, where many flint implements were also found. Considerably later, and probably belonging to the Bronze Age (though finds of bronze implements have been scanty), are the many cairns and tumuli, mainly on the hills, such as on Garth Mountain near Cardiff, Crug-yr-avan and a number east of the Tawe; the stone circles often found in association with the tumuli, that of Carn Llecharth near Pontardawe being one of the most complete in Wales; and the fine cromlechs of Cefn Bryn in Gower (known as Arthur’s Stone), of St Nicholas and of St Lythan’s near Cardiff.
In Roman times the country from the Neath to the Wye was occupied by the Silures, a pre-Celtic race, probably governed at that time by Brythonic Celts. West of the Neath and along the fringe of the Brecknock Mountains were probably remnants of the earlier Goidelic Celts, who have left traces in the place-names of the Swansea valley (e.g. llwch, “a lake”) and in the illegible Ogham inscription at Loughor, the only other Ogham stone in the county being at Kenfig, a few miles to the east of the Neath estuary. The conquest of the Silures by the Romans was begun about A.D. 50 by Ostorius Scapula and completed some 25 years later by Julius Frontinus, who probably constructed the great military road, called Via Julia Maritima, from Gloucester to St David’s, with stations at Cardiff, Bovium (variously identified with Boverton, Cowbridge and Ewenny), Nidum (identified with Neath) and Leucarum or Loughor. The important station of Gaer on the Usk near Brecon was connected by two branch roads, one running from Cardiff through Gelligaer (where there was a strong hill fort) and Merthyr Tydfil, and another from Neath through Capel Colbren. Welsh tradition credits Glamorgan with being the first home of Christianity, and Llandaff the earliest bishopric in Britain, the name of three reputed missionaries of the 2nd century being preserved in the names of parishes in south Glamorgan. What is certain, however, is that the first two bishops of Llandaff, St Dubricius and St Teilo, lived during the first half of the 6th century, to which period also belongs the establishment of the great monastic settlements of Llancarvan by Cadoc, of Llandough by Oudoceus and of Llantwit Major by Illtutus, the last of which flourished as a seat of learning down to the 12th century. A few moated mounds such as at Cardiff indicate that, after the withdrawal of the Romans, the coasts were visited by sporadic bands of Saxons, but the Scandinavians who came in the 9th and succeeding centuries left more abundant traces both in the place-names of the coast and in such camps as that on Sully Island, the Bulwarks at Porthkerry and Hardings Down in Gower. Meanwhile the native tribes of the district had regained their independence under a line of Welsh chieftains, whose domain was consolidated into a principality known as Glywyssing, till about the end of the 10th century when it acquired the name of Morganwg, that is the territory of Morgan, a prince who died in A.D. 980; it then comprised the whole country from the Neath to the Wye, practically corresponding to the present diocese of Llandaff. Gwlad Morgan, later softened into Glamorgan, never had much vogue and meant precisely the same as Morganwg, though the two terms became differentiated a few centuries later.
The Norman conquest of Morganwg was effected in the closing years of the 11th century by Robert Fitzhamon, lord of Gloucester. His followers settled in the low-lying lands of the “Vale,” which became known as the “body” of the shire, while in the hill country, which consisted of ten “members,” corresponding to its ancient territorial divisions, the Welsh retained their customary laws and much of their independence. Glamorgan, whose bounds were now contracted between the Neath and the Rhymney, then became a lordship marcher, its status and organization being that of a county palatine; its lord possessed jura regalia, and his chief official was from the first a vice-comes, or sheriff, who presided over a county court composed of his lord’s principal tenants. The inhabitants of Cardiff in which, as the caput baroniae, this court was held (though sometimes ambulatory), were soon granted municipal privileges, and in time Cowbridge, Kenfig, Llantrisant, Aberavon and Neath also became chartered market-towns. The manorial system was introduced throughout the “Vale,” the manor in many cases becoming the parish, and the owner building for its protection first a castle and then a church. The church itself became Normanized, and monasteries were established—the Cistercian abbey of Neath and Margam in 1129 and 1147 respectively, the Benedictine priory of Ewenny in 1141 and that of Cardiff in 1147. Dominican and Franciscan houses were also founded at Cardiff in the following century.
Gower (with Kilvey) or the country west of the morass between Neath and Swansea had a separate history. It was conquered about 1100 by Henry de Newburgh, 1st earl of Warwick, by whose descendants and the powerful family of De Breos it was successively held as a marcher lordship, organized to some extent on county lines, till 1469. Swansea (which was the caput baroniae of Gower) and Loughor received their earlier charters from the lords of Gower (see Gower).
For the first two centuries after Fitzhamon’s time the lordship of Glamorgan was held by the earls of Gloucester, a title conferred by Henry I. on his natural son Robert, who acquired Glamorgan by marrying Fitzhamon’s daughter. To the 1st earl’s patronage of Geoffrey of Monmouth and other men of letters, at Cardiff Castle of which he was the builder, is probably due the large place which Celtic romance, especially the Arthurian cycle, won for itself in medieval literature. The lordship passed by descent through the families of Clare (who held it from 1217 to 1317), Despenser, Beauchamp and Neville to Richard III., on whose fall it escheated to the crown. From time to time, the Welsh of the hills, often joined by their countrymen from other
