Swansea is a coastal city and the second-largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Swansea.
Until 1974, Glamorgan, or sometimes Glamorganshire, was an administrative county in the south of Wales, and later classed as one of the thirteen historic counties of Wales. Originally an early medieval petty kingdom of varying boundaries known in Welsh as Morgannwg, which was then invaded and taken over by the Normans as the Lordship of Glamorgan. The area that became known as Glamorgan was both a rural, pastoral area, and a conflict point between the Norman lords and the Welsh princes. It was defined by a large concentration of castles.
Port Talbot is a town and community in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales, situated on the east side of Swansea Bay, approximately eight miles from Swansea. The Port Talbot Steelworks covers a large area of land which dominates the south east of the town. It is one of the biggest steelworks in the world, but has been under threat of closure since the 1980s. The population was 31,550 in 2021, comprising about a fifth of the 141,931 population of Neath Port Talbot.
Swansea University is a public research university located in Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom.
The University of Glamorgan was a university based in South Wales prior to the merger with University of Wales, Newport, that formed the University of South Wales in April 2013. The university was based in Pontypridd, in Rhondda Cynon Taf, with campuses in Trefforest, Glyntaff, Merthyr Tydfil, Tyn y Wern and Cardiff. The university had four faculties, and was the only university in Wales which had no link with the University of Wales.
South Wales is a loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, south Wales extends westwards to include Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. In the western extent, from Swansea westwards, local people would probably recognise that they lived in both south Wales and west Wales. The Brecon Beacons National Park covers about a third of south Wales, containing Pen y Fan, the highest British mountain south of Cadair Idris in Snowdonia.
Aberavon is a town and community in Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales. The town derived its name from being near the mouth of the river Afan, which also gave its name to a medieval lordship. Today it is essentially a district of Port Talbot, covering the central and south western part of the town. Aberavon is also the name of the nearby Blue Flag beach and the parish covering the same area.
Abercynon is a village and community in the Cynon Valley within the unitary authority of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. The community comprises the village and the districts of Carnetown and Grovers Field to the south, Navigation Park to the east, and Glancynon to the north.
The South Wales Valleys are a group of industrialised peri-urban valleys in South Wales. Most of the valleys run north–south, roughly parallel to each other. Commonly referred to as "The Valleys", they stretch from Carmarthenshire in the west to Monmouthshire in the east; to the edge of the pastoral country of the Vale of Glamorgan and the coastal plain near the cities of Swansea, Cardiff, and Newport.
The Miners Strike of 1910-11 was an attempt by miners and their families to improve wages and living conditions in severely deprived parts of South Wales, where wages had been kept deliberately low for many years by a cartel of mine owners.
The South Wales Coalfield extends across Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen. It is rich in coal deposits, especially in the South Wales Valleys.
Archives Wales is a web resource that allows cross-searching of Welsh archive collections. It was founded in 1995 as Archives Council Wales and was renamed to Archives and Records Council Wales (ARCW) in 2004. The archives are described at collection level only, although the ultimate intention is to allow for searching at item level. In July 2009, after a major refurbishment funded by CyMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries Wales, it was relaunched as Archives Wales, or Archifau Cymru in the Welsh language. The URL is Archives.Wales or archifau.cymru
Community Archives Wales (CAW) is a website of digital content created and maintained by a number of community heritage groups from across Wales. The initiative for the project came from a partnership between lead partner Culturenet Cymru, a not-for-profit enterprise arm of the National Library of Wales and Glamorgan Archives, Swansea University Archives, South Wales Miners' Library and West Glamorgan Archive Service. The original project ran from 2007 to 2008 with funding from Communities@One, an initiative of the Communities First programme in Wales.
The Glamorgan Archives, previously known as the Glamorgan Record Office, is a county record office and repository based in Leckwith, Cardiff, Wales. It holds records for the whole of the historic county of Glamorgan but primarily for the post-1974 counties of Mid and South Glamorgan.
Chris Williams was a Welsh academic, best known for his work on editing the diaries of Richard Burton. Williams was Head of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, and Professor of History at University College Cork, Ireland, from 2017 to 2024.
Ronald Anthony Berry was a Welsh author of novels and short stories. Born in the Rhondda Valleys where he remained for most his life, his books reflect the working class of the industrial valleys though his vision is more optimistic and there is less concern for politics and religion which was expressed by many of his contemporaries.
David Burton "Dai" SmithFLSW is a Welsh academic, cultural historian, author, and former BBC programme editor and broadcaster. He was chair of the Arts Council of Wales between 2007 and 2016.
Anne Borsay was a medical historian. She was appointed as the first Chair of Medical Humanities at Swansea University in 2003, a position she held until her death in 2014. Her academic work explored the history of medical institutions and, later, the role of disabled people in the coal industry in south Wales.
John Davies is a Welsh poet whose first collection, The Strangers, was published in 1974. He was awarded the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize in 1985.
The Industrial Revolution in Wales was the adoption and developments of new technologies in Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries as part of the Industrial Revolution, resulting in increases in the scale of industry in Wales.
