of St Mary has a massive tower possibly of pre-Norman date; there are a town-hall, an institute with library and lecture hall, and memorials to a victory gained by King Alfred over the Danes in the bay in 877, and to Albert, Prince Consort. A large export trade is carried on in stone from the Purbeck quarries.
SWANSEA, a municipal, county and parliamentary borough,
market town, and seaport of Glamorganshire, South Wales,
finely situated in an angle between lofty hills, on the river
Tawe or Tawy near its mouth in Swansea Bay, a beautiful
recess of the Bristol Channel, 201 m. W. of London by rail and
4512 m. W.N.W. of Cardiff. The Great Western main line has a
junction within the borough at Landore, whence a branch runs
into a more central part of the town. The Vale of Neath branch
of the same railway and the Rhondda & Swansea Bay railway
(now worked by the Great Western) have terminal stations near
the docks on the other (eastern) side of the river, as also has the
Midland railway from Hereford and Brecon. All these lines
approach the town from the north and east through an unattractive
industrial district, but the central Wales branch of
the London & North-Western railway from Craven Arms in
entering it on the west passes through some beautiful woodlands
and then skirts the bay, having parallel to it for the last
3 m. the light (passenger) railway which runs from Swansea to
Mumbles Pier. The older part of the town, being the whole
of the municipal borough previous to 1836, occupies the west
bank of the Taw£ near its mouth and is now wholly given up to
business. Stretching inland to the north along the river for
some 3 m. through Landore to Morriston, and also eastwards
along the sea margin towards Neath, is the industrial quarter,
while the residential part occupies the sea front and the slopes
of the Town Hill (580 ft. high) to the west, stretching out to
the pleasant suburb of Sketty. The east side of the river (known
as St Thomas’s and Port Tennant) is approached from the west
by a road carried over the North Dock Lock and the river by
two girder drawbridges, each of which has a double line of
roadway (on which tramways are laid), two footpaths and a
line of railway. All the main thoroughfares are spacious, and
in two or three instances even imposing, but most of the residential
part consists of monotonous stuccoed terraces. The
climate is mild and relaxing and the rainfall averages about
40 in. annually.
Public Buildings, &c.—The old castle, first built by Henry deNewburgh about 1099, has entirely disappeared; but of the new castle, which was probably intended only as a fortified house, there remain the great and lesser halls, a tower and a so-called keep with the curtain wall connecting them, its chief architectural feature being a fine embattled parapet with an arcade of pointed arches in a style similar to that of the episcopal palaces of St Davids and Lamphey built by Henry Gower (d. 1347), bishop of St Davids, to whom the building of the new “castle” is also ascribed. Part of it is now used as the headquarters of the 4th Welsh (Howitzer) Brigade R.F.A. Possibly some traces of St Davids Hospital, built by the same prelate in 1331, are still to be seen at Cross Keys Inn. The parish church of St Mary was entirely rebuilt in 1895–1898. It previously consisted of a tower and chancel (with a fine Decorated window) built by Bishop Gower, the piers of the chancel arch being partly built on earlier Norman work, the Herbert Chapel (originally St Ann’s) of about the same date as the chancel and rebuilt in the early part of the 16th century, and a nave built in 1739. Of the earlier work there remains the door of the rood loft (built into a wall), a 15th-century brass-inlaid marble slab with a representation of the resurrection, in memory of Sir Hugh Johnys (d. c. 1463) and his wife, and three canopied altar tombs—one with the effigy of a priest and another with effigies of Sir Matthew Cradock and his wife. Within the parish of St Mary was St John’s, the church of a small parish of the same name lying to the north of St Mary’s and once owned by the Knights Hospitallers. This church, which was entirely rebuilt in 1820, was renamed St Matthew in 1880, when a new St John’s was built within its own parish. There are 26 other churches and 10 mission rooms belonging to the Church of England, besides 2 Roman Catholic churches, a synagogue and 84 Nonconformist chapels (31 Welsh and 53 English) and 20 mission rooms, but all are modern buildings. There are 9 ecclesiastical parishes and parts of two or three others, all in the diocese of St Davids. The Royal Institution of South Wales, founded in 1835, is housed in a handsome building in the Ionic style erected in 1838–1839 and possesses a museum in which the geology, mineralogy, botany and antiquities of the district are well represented, there being a fine collection of neolithic remains from the Gower Caves and from Merthyr Mawr. Its library is rich in historical and scientific works relating to Wales and Welsh industries and contains the collection of historical MSS. made by Colonel Grant-Francis, some time its honorary librarian, but one of its most valued possessions is the original contract of affiance between Edward II. (when prince of Wales) and Isabella. Its art gallery has many prints and drawings of great local interest and here the Swansea Art Society holds its annual exhibition. The Swansea Scientific Society also meets here. In its early days the institution was the chief centre of scientific activity in South Wales, those associated with its work including L. W. Dillwyn, James Motley, Dr Gutch and J. E. Bicheno, all botanists, J. Gwyn Jeffreys, conchologist, Sir W. R. Grove and the 1st Lord Swansea, the last three being natives of the town.
The free library and art gallery of the corporation, a four-storeyed building in Italian style erected in 1887, contains the library of the Rev. Rowland Williams (one of the authors of Essays and Reviews), the rich Welsh collection of the Rev. Robert Jones of Rotherhithe, a small Devonian section (presented by the Swansea Devonian Society), and about 8000 volumes and 2500 prints and engravings, intended to be mutually illustrative, given by the Swansea portrait-painter and art critic, John Deffett Francis, from 1876 to i88r, to receive whose first gift the library was established in 1876. It also contains a complete set of the patent office publications.
The grammar school founded in 1682 by Hugh Gore (1613–1691), bishop of Waterford, is now carried on by the town council under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889, and there is a similar school for girls. The technical college is also carried on by the town council, the chief features of its curriculum being chemistry, metallurgy and engineering. A training college for school-mistresses, established by the British and Foreign School Society in 1872, was transferred to the town council in 1908.
The other public buildings of the town include the gildhall and law courts, in the Italian style with Corinthian pillars and pilasters, built in 1847 and internally remodelled in 1901; a prison (1829); a fine market hall (1830), rebuilt in 1897; a cattle market and abattoirs (1869); the Albert Hall for concerts and public meetings (1864); the] Royal Metal Exchange (1897); harbour trust offices (1904); a central post office (1901) and two theatres. The benevolent institutions include the general hospital, founded in 1817, removed to the present site in 1867, extended by the addition of two wings in 1878 and of an eye department in 1890; a convalescent home for twenty patients from the hospital only (1903); the Royal Cambrian Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, established in 1847 at Aberystwyth, removed to Swansea in 1850, and several times enlarged, so as to have at present accommodation for ninety-eight pupils; the Swansea and South Wales Institution for the Blind, established in 1865 and now under the Board of Education; the Swansea and South Wales Nursing Institute (1873), providing a home for nurses in the intervals of their employment; a nursing institution (1902) for nursing the sick poor in their own homes, affiliated with the Queen’s Jubilee Institute of London; the Sailors’ Home (1864); a Sailors’ Rest (1885); and a Mission to Seamens Institute (1904).
The town possesses 103 acres of parks and open spaces, the chief being Llewelyn Park of 42 acres in the north of the town near Morriston, Victoria Park (16 acres) and recreation ground (8 acres) abutting on the sands in the west, with the privately owned football field between them, Cwmdonkin (15 acres) commanding a fine panoramic view of the bay, and Brynmill (9 acres) with a disused reservoir constructed in 1837 and now converted into an ornamental lake. Other features of these parks are a small botanical garden in Cwmdonkin, a good collection of waterfowl in Brynmill, and a small aviary of the rarer British birds in Victoria Park, which also has a meteorological station in connexion with the meteorological office,