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About the book
Over about 200 years, up until the 1930s, the open valley of the River Tawe became one of the most heavily industrialised areas of the developed world. The 'Holy Grail' which lay beneath the lands of Graig Trewyddfa, in Swansea, locally known as the 'Great Penvilia Five Foot Vein', was renowned for its quality; smelting metals, at the time, required more than three parts of coal to every one of metal ore, so this was of major economic benefit.
Mining the Penvilian coal brought about its own problems – use of child labour, serious accidents, flooding and explosions. It became apparent in the mid-1880s that it was cheaper to smelt ores at the source, rather than ship them to Swansea; this led to the gradual cessation of copper smelting and closing of most coal mines in the Swansea area.