September in Pembroke and in Swansea

 The big event in Pembroke this month was the Iron Man contest on September 14th - the Main Street was closed as contestants cycled along the Street in the circular route from Tenby and back.   

Our Autumn programme kicked off with Quiz Night on September 19th.  Colin and George represented the Society at the Local History Fair on September 27th which clashed with the Joint Conference of the South West Maritime History Society and the West Wales Maritime Heritage Society for which Stuart and I put together a presentation on aspects of Pembroke’s maritime past.

This took place at the Swansea Waterfront Museum, a modern build of steel and glass, it is situated in Swansea’s Martime Quarter although it is not a maritime museum as you might think (was disappointed about that).   It  actually sets out to, and I quote, ‘tell the story of how industry and innovation have affected the lives of people in Wales over the last 300 years’. 

It was built at huge cost with ‘the latest in interactive multi-media technology’ but this is not to my taste – I find this reliance on audio visual, sound effects,  touch screens (hate them, they rarely seem to work!) gimmicky and non museum like.  I found it all very confusing, especially as the interpretation screens were glass and lit from the back, a jumble of Welsh and English, with my poor eyesight I couldn’t make any sense of it. 

Copperopolis

The reason for siting an industrial museum here is Swansea’s industrial history.   Before the Industrial Revolution, Swansea was famous as a watering place, the ‘Brighton of Wales’, no less.  However, possessing plentiful coal reserves and situated on a navigable river, it was also ideal for industrial development.  Welsh coal, combined with copper ore from Cornwall and Devon, made Swansea the pre-eminent centre for the world’s copper industry, which led to its being known popularly as ‘Copperopolis’. However, it was no longer a pleasant place to live as the pollution was intense but ‘where’s there’s muck there’s money’: Swansea grew wealthy and provided employment on a massive scale.  Its population mushroomed.  A contemporary poem said it like this:

‘It came to pass in times of yore

The devil chanced upon Landore

Quoths he – by all this fume and stink

I can’t be far from home, I think!’

White Rocks and Hafod Smelters, Swansea c1830 by Gastineau.

To house a museum about our industrial past in a pristine, clinical building with exhibits in sparkling glass cases does, to me, seem rather incongruous.