Oh What A Time... - #191 Jonny Owen on Industrial Wales (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 19, 2026

This week we’re joined by friend of the show, producer, writer and actor (and proud Welshman), Jonny Owen to discuss the golden age of Industrial Revolution era Wales!We’ll chat copper in Swansea, the iron town of Merthyr Tydfil, and the sheer volume of steam coal dug out of the Cynon Valley, the Rhondda Valley and the Taff Valley.Jonny is heading to Hamburg in his one day Time Machine so what better time to ask you if this is a good idea? Or what you’d do with yours? Do email: [e-mail] 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Tuesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus, if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime. Hello and welcome to All What a Time, the History Podcast. Today is to ask the question. If you flood this podcast with Welsh people, does it affect the balance? Does it ruin the dynamic we've created of the last couple of years? But we're putting it to the test because we've got a good friend of mine,

a good friend of Chris as well. John Yowin is our guest for today. Hello, Johnny, how are you? I'm very good. Thanks for asking me, lads. It's nice to be here. Now then, Johnny and I have long, in-depth conversations about history, Welsh identity, football and the Beatles. It's probably my favourite thing to do with my phone.

Johnny has got a history degree. We talk an awful lot about Welsh history, in particular, the history of the Industrial Revolution, which we're going to be discussing today. And what I didn't realise until today, though, was that Johnny has a very 1850s attitude to technology. Did you say 1950s or 1850s? 1850s, yeah.

Johnny doesn't have a laptop, but his phone is steam-powered. But you do it. Yeah, I had no idea, Johnny, that you were such a 20th century boy. I know, yeah, yeah. I still had a walkman until about 10, 10, 15 years ago with tapes. I did. That's me. Yeah, I'm amazed reading that I've got an iPhone.

But, no, I've never had a laptop. That's just not my thing. Well, everything comes for the phone now. It's emails and texts and lots. You're actually ahead of us. Where are the old-fashioned ones. Yeah. The thing with tapes is that if you go to sort of, you know,

the East end of London where Tom and Chris live, the sort of where the trendy, hip and happening people live. They've moved past vinyl to the Walkman. Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. So as long as you just stick with your technology, eventually it will come back in, which is what Dad used to say about his big Kipper Ties in the 90s.

Glad hadn't thrown out to any of his, like, 70s Kipper Ties. And I used to laugh at him, he was like, you watch, you watch, these are going to come back in. One of the fashion rules they say is, and if you wore something the first time, you shouldn't be wearing it the second time. So, like, if Manchester Flayers came back in, like, I wore them again,

it's like, it's not a great luck for a man of my vintage. I think that's not a bad rule to sort of stick by, really. Well, that's interesting, actually, because I saw it, do you remember Peter Reed, famous footballer in the 80s? Yeah. Have you seen these trousers recently? Yeah.

He's adopted the trouser style of, like, Harry Styles. But I don't remember Peter Reed wearing Flairs first time around. So I think he's taken that rule. on board. He went viral and he looked great for a man of his sort of age. He had these like sort of great almost like those 70s, yeah, sort of like Saturday, you know, the high waist. I did not have fever, yeah. I don't know what they remind me of someone who is

playing the part of someone who's in the Navy in a musical. That's what they look like. Massive. New York, New York. Exactly, yeah, that's it. That's it. That's exactly here. The thing with Peter Reed, I always used to wonder, I thought, when he was in his Everton Pomp, you know, when they were winning the European Cup and his cup,

when he was playing in the 86 World Cup, he was a young man. What did he look like then? And I looked into it. He looked exactly the same. He's got to get into it. He said, I'll fight. He's impossible to imagine him as a young man.

But if you look at old football stickers from like the 70 or 80s or whatever, nobody looks younger than 50. No, no. Everyone. No. As soon as they're in the first team at age 18, they look ancient.

Johnny, we've started talking about the past in terms of football. but I'm going to offer you some settling questions. The first settling question we always ask is, if we were to give you a one-day time machine, you can go back to anywhere in the past for a single day. You're not in any danger necessarily, so you can go check out a battle if you want and be unharmed. Where would you go and why?

I was thinking, oh, you've got to be sort of moor's there, sort of in the height of the Industrial Revolution. Well, actually, I did think I would go back to the Reaper Barn, 1960, and I'd go and see the Beatles in Hamburg. That's fun. dance so we found. I'm reading Stuart McCornie's book with a little help for my friends

about the Beatles and the Hamburg stuff. They always used to say that when we were at their best. That's sort of like 20 minute versions of what I say and things and call in response with the crows at the work, the crowd. I mean, there would have been all night they're playing as well. They are the Beatles on stage. The only slight thing is, you know, would ring or it'd have been

best Beatles, wouldn't it? Mostly in Hamburg. But I still would have loved to have seen them. Are you going around telling everyone in the crowd that these guys are going to be massive? Are you going to be so... Just trust me. Yeah. So they then remember, they go, wait, I met this guy, right? He predicted it all.

This Welsh fella going, take all this in. Every note. Drink it in. No, not massive like Cliff Richard, a different kind of thing. Would you have liked to have seen him at the start of the run or the end? Like, would you have liked to see early Beatles that it is? in Hamburg or when they'd perfected their act? Yeah, I think about sort of,

after Stuart Sutcliffe has left and that sort of period, just before they've sort of just, as Epstein, they'd go back over after Epstein's got them, I think they went over as late as sort of 62, 63, they might have even gone. So that period, when they're just about signed

and they'd just get and going, I would love to see them then. I was tempted to say the cavern, but I think in Hamburg you'd get the real all night beat. The cabin was like a sort of a Pop and Crisp's place, wasn't it, open in the afternoons? Oh, really? Lunchtime. Yeah, it's like a lunchtime thing

because Britain was really straight out like milk bars in Britain and the real teenagey sort of things really. Yeah, we covered those, yeah. Yeah, like the mod scene, the ham yard. I always assumed that was like a nightclub setting so it's not that. It was actually an afternoon thing for teenagers. Same as the ham yard, the big mod thing in London,

was like in afternoons really. Because they were all 15 and 16. That was the thing with teenagers then. They were like everybody was old, young then, like my father and all got married at like 17, 18. Yeah. 16, they were all leaving school at 15. So they were acting like adults.

We were just talking about it by six. They all looked like adults, didn't they? But they're 16, 17, because you sort of grew up much more quickly. That's fascinating. The fact that you've got a Beatles, a Beatles t-shirt on, and you've just said you'd go on a one-day time machine to watch the Beatles. That brings us to a key debate on this podcast that's been raging for quite a while. Chris, I'll pass over to you to give your controversial.

point of view which Ellis and I could not agree with less. I actually cannot watch him say this. I'm just stare at my printer which is there because I can't look him in the eye. Johnny, a few weeks ago I made the point that in some respects, what the killers have done with popular music is more

impressive than the Beatles because the Beatles had an open canvas. They were the first true pop band. They established the album format. They could have done whatever they wanted. The killers were working within a very narrow framework. And never have our listeners agreed with anything less, Johnny.

The amount of emails. Just to drop the act, I'm actually ashamed. I've just asked that question, John. I think, you know, there's a theory is that music, popular music, of the guitar vintage, just mind out, really. So it's more difficult for bands now because the Beatles kind of did so many things first. It's, you know, I see a point. It's more the Beatles.

The Beatles were able to sort of like be pioneers because it was all fresh and new. Do you know what I mean? But, you know, the beat last. I laughed the other day at something. It was on Talksport, actually, bringing puckblins. But I think it was Jason Cundee, said, he said the Pelley wouldn't get in the current Arsenal team. You've got to get callers, haven't you?

You've got to get callers. I was like, fair plate to him, like, he was like, what? Oh, I'm just brilliant. A man who could do everything. Yeah, it's like, what? A man who was not fallible in any sense on the football. Or pitch.

Wouldn't get any Arsenal team. But I think, so there's worse out there, Chris. There's worse things we say. Right. Talk about the history proper of this show. Yeah. So, you know, this episode is about the Industrial Revolution in Wales. You touched upon the fact you've studied this, have you?

You have a background there? Is that right? I did. Yeah, I was very lucky I went to Swansea University for a number of years. And I was lectured there by the brilliant priest Morgan that Ellis would know well. He's Rodry Morgan's brother. Really, really bright, brilliant guy. Yeah.

to him, we write to each other, sort of letters because he sort of kept an eye. And they were very kind, they gave me a doctorate two years ago, Swansea did. And he turned up, and he's in his 90s now, and he still drives, and he swims in the sea every morning. And about 40 or 50 people go with him now, because they can see. And his mother lived in 200s, and he goes in the sea every morning and swims in the sea. Incredible guy. That's amazing. I know. So he lectured me on the, on the Industrial Revolution in Wales. And I used to, I was, he remembers me. I used to go to lectures that I didn't have to go to because I was just so interested in urine stuff. So I'd be like going on the lecture halls and they'd be like they'd be a lecture on about

the robber barrens say in America and the opening up of America with the railway is like, well I've listened to this so I'd go into lectures and the lecture and be like up to me, like you meant to be in this class. I was like no can I come in and you go yeah come on then. So I loved it. I just love it's like I was like I was like goodwill hunting. Yeah. Yeah. To write in history. Yeah. I say on the ball outside. You got a mopping up. Yeah, I was I was a bit of I just I loved university. I was I went in a little bit

later in life. I worked in Hoover like every else in Murza. I was on computers. My father, I loved it. I was a computer boy. He was delighted I got in there because it was considered like a job for life. But they shut the department down because obviously the redundancy started and they gave me the princely sum of £7,000. This is the early 90s.

And I thought, you know what? I'm going back to school. I'm going to go back to do some A levels and a degree. So I went back and I did some A levels and I ended up doing a degree in Swans. So I was in my early 20s when I went. So I was kind of like I think, you know, I was less enamored with, I went out to plenty of But I was there and I wanted to be there.

I really wanted to learn. I wasn't just every night day. And I was very lucky to do it, you know. Obviously there was a big recession in Wales. People, you know, the 80s was a tough time because all the pits went. And then into the early 90s, it's kind of like there was another recession.

People forget the second recession of the early 90s, which was, and there was just no work. There was no work in Merth or something like Murth. It was really hard, you know, to explain to people. I used to see signs on outside newsagages is to go like, and there was, without exaggeration, Ellis, remember, 2,000 jobs gone at Deep Navigation Pit. and I used to go, I'm never going to get a job.

It's just going to look at 2,000 people. And so, Murther had thousands of people that were employed in the pits in the borough. Hoover was a good example. Hoover employed 5,000 people at one point, and now it's not there anymore. In a small town, imagine that, the effect that has on a town,

a population of about 50,000. A friend of mine's from Mountain Ash, and he was in a band, but the height of unemployment in that part of the South Wales valleys, and he said what had happened with young people was there was a sort of barter system in that he,

you would just swap in something because no one had any money. So he had a camera, like quite a nice camera and his mate at a bass guitar. And even though they were different values, he was like, well, I don't want this

and you don't want that. So we'll just swap. So the idea of a monetary value of something had kind of disappeared was no one had any money in the first place. How interesting? So, yeah, it was because there was just

people thought they were never going to work again. Yeah, yeah. When I said there was no work, it sounds really dramatic now, but there was no work. You couldn't get, there was nothing, nobody was taking on. It was like, you know, all the places

of the factories were shutting down. Like the song, Ghostown, it was a bit like that. So you were like, you had to go to Cardiff, mostly, or London, you know, that was that sort of thing. So the idea of getting a job in Mertha was kind of like, it was very, very difficult. And Murther as well,

cradle of the Industrial Revolution, which we were going to be interesting. I was, I was working out, the BBC did a thing, God, two years ago now, there was the 200th anniversary of Kabatha Castle being built, which is a mock castle in the middle of Mertha town centre

dominates the town's got a huge park around it and he was built by the Crochet family who owned one of the ironworks, the biggest ironworks in the world at the time. Sort of a statement of power. He built a giant mock castle as his house that overlooking up the ironworks and where the workers were.

And I grew up with his story. My grandfather was one of 12 and his father had him when he was quite old. His father had him and he was like late 40s, early 50s and by some freak, my great grandfather, his father also had him when he was in his late 40s

early. So only two back, two generations from me, I was speaking to people that remember people that were born in the 1800s. So he would tell me stories about his father, who was a minor, and his great grandfather, who, you know, who came from West Wales, because Murtha had this amazing thing would have sucked in people. Nobody lived in Murtha.

It was just a few scattered farms until he had all the materials for Brian making. You know, was it running water, limestone, iron ore, coal. So it was all that kind of stuff. So Murtha was this sort of Murtha didn't exist. So Murtha was a great example. My grandfather had to talk

by his father and his grandfather come into Murtha from Llandailo. And I heard this story. My first ever piss up in Llandailo. We've all got to Flandaios today. Yeah, yeah, they did. And I was like, I kind of,

I was always interested in that in telling me. And so the BBC did this thing and Cabal and he went to me, oh, that's why we came to Moza, my grandfather came to work on the castle. And I thought, like, oh, he was like a labourer on the castle.

So the BBC scratched through, Bickey framed it to me, I've got it years, and they found my five-time great-grandfather in Llandilo living in the 1600s, Thomas Owen. And him and his son was what they called an ornate master plasterer. So they basically, when the Carver Castle was being built, they sent for him to West Wales

because he did all the work on the inside of the castle. Wow. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. So I was like, okay. Then his son, who was my great guy, they all became minors because obviously the ones of the castle. was built. They all were miners or iron workers. And so they did this family street for me. And it was a little bit of Irish, like everybody in Murtha.

My nanny was family from Kour. He came over John Marney to work in the castle, in the ironworks in Dallas. That was the biggest ironworks in the world. But there was all these other people from West Wales. And this is where me and Ireland are fascinating conversations. You could, they were to go to Murther and make so much sense.

And they'd go, are there's work in Murtha in a pit or in an ironworks? Great. Where do you go? Well, you go where your cousin or your brother is? and there were streets in Murtha where literally where everybody from Lland Island Islander lived to a place called Williams down. So there were villages from West Wales.

I had streets in Murtha, everybody moved to the same street. So I was like, they could trace my family. I found all that absolutely fascinating. I'm also fascinated by the psychology of someone who owns, is it an ironwork, you'd say? Yeah, yeah. It still feels the need to make their house look like a castle. We get it, you're powerful, you're successful, it's all right.

You don't need a castle house as well. They were kind of like, look, they built the railways. The Black, it was sort of late, there was in 1840s, 1850s. But before that, it was all military. It was arms dealers, basically, because it was the Napoleonic Wars. Yeah. He helped fire the Industrial Revolution. And Murtha built so many.

And Nelson famously come to Murtha to say, thank you for some of the cannons that were built on one of the ships that I think he might be the coach. Wow. But there's a great newspaper report going. He comes to Murtha, and I think he's got his bit on the side of him and all that. And they stopped in Nelson on the way in a tavern. And that's why Nelson is called Nelson. They renamed the village.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. Because Nelson stayed there. Because he was visiting the Ironworks and Murtha. And I swear this is true. And it says they fired off a whatever gun salute for Nelson. And one of the guns, unfortunately, backfired, killing a 14-year-old boy, but it didn't put a dampener on the celebrations of the day.

A different time. You know, life was cheap. Like, oh, I just got there. Young die Don't let it spoil the day So Nelson came to Mertha And worked in the iron world And I just think

The Welsh Industrial Revolution is very different Because obviously I'm fascinated by Manchester But I was textiles And Birmingham was manufacturing and all that But the South Wales was very, very unique In the sense It was all heavy industry It was only sort of iron and coal

They were the only games in town For our listeners Shall we now step through Some of the history of the Industrial Revolution in Wales. We've each got a section. And feel free to add as much as you know because you know far more than we do.

So we'll take our listeners through the journey, basically, of the Industrial Revolution in Wales. It's a fascinating story. I've got to say, we've already had our mic drop moment with the master plasterer story. I mean, I'm absolutely staggered at that. I mean, I studied that castle at school, and we did school visits to it.

That's right, yeah. And I cannot believe I know. now no someone was related to the guy who did all of the ornate stuff. That's absolutely brought me away. I know. And it was really interesting because they had brilliant researchers on those shows. And she was sort of explaining to me his son became an ornate master to pass it. And so he was passed down the generations.

And the reason it didn't get to my great-grandfather was he, I remember saying his father had him when he was very old. He died when he was eight. So my great-grandfather, his father died when he was eight. And he didn't live enough to pass it on to him. So he didn't get the skills. How did he be... A link in the chain broke.

A link in the chain broke. Way back to where... And the idea they sent for him to Clandaiolk that they went to bring him over from West Wales to sort of do this work. Incredible, really. Right. Well, I'm going to take you...

We'll stick in West Wales. Now, we normally associate the Industrial Revolution in Wales with the Abendamayan production in the 18th century, Mertha in particular, and the rapid growth of the coal mining industry in the 19th century. But the true origins of the Industrial Revolution aren't just older than that, but they had other outlets as well. Now, these days, people associate copper with sort of Latin America,

so Chindley is one of the major sources of the world's supply. The 300 years ago, a small town on the southern coast of Wales, quickly turned into Copperopolis. Now, John, you'll know where Copperopolis is. Can I review to guess Tom or Chris? Where was it? Where in Wales? It's in South Wales.

Swansea. It's in Swansea? It is Swansea. It is Swansea, that's right. That's what, yeah. now more famous for having a football team that was in the Premier League for seven years. And then threw it all away.

Then threw it all away, yeah. Why have you gone for the nickname Swans when you could have had copper? There's got to be something to do with copper. And the nickname for so many football teams are to do with the industrial background. Like Yovil Tower near I grew up, they're the Glovers because that was a big glove-making.

So you'd assume that there'd be some kind of copper link with the ones. Yeah, well, with the Jacks of the Swans. So that's the... What's the... What's that referred to, then? That's a dog. Yeah.

Who is it? Dog used to rescue people who'd fallen into... Swansea Bay. Yeah. There's got to be a better system than that, isn't it? You can't just have one dog dealing with the sea rescue. One brave dog.

We need a formal life service here, shall we? It's a dog's a rocketry, Nickley, in my list. It's one they're very proud of in Swansea, when they call him Swansea Jax. So how many people do this dog save? I just quickly drill down into this dog. It is, for one of a better word, a mega dog. Yeah. This dog was incredible.

It was one dog called Jack. The dog's name was Jack. The dog's name was Indiana. He was a dog who rescued people from the docks and riverbanks of Swansy and Wales, a black retriever of a longish coat, and he rescued 29 people. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah.

It's incredible. I never knew. that. Did he at least have one of those big barrels to keep himself afloat? You know, there's massive ones. Because there is a, there's a monument to him on the promenade where St. Helens with rugby team play.

Now, Coppropolis sort of, it doesn't begin in Swansea, so it begins in Neith, which is just down the road, or rather Neith Abbey, where a copperworks was opened in 1694 by a group of businessmen and investors led by Bristolian, John Lane. This is one of the interesting things about

the Industrial Revolution in Wales is that certainly the early stages, it didn't have a huge amount to do with the Welsh, right? Because there weren't very many Welsh people before 1850, you know, in terms of population. And also, the vast majority of Welsh people were far too poor to contemplate investment in industrial enterprises.

So the expertise and the money necessary tended to come, you know, when it came to some things like managing industries such as copper or iron, all of that expertise and cash came from elsewhere. often the English Midlands. So Lane was joined in the venture by Thomas Collins and John Pollard

and Lane had studied at Exeter College in Oxford. He had a medical degree from Leiden University in the Netherlands. So most of his life was spent practicing medicine in Bristol, even though he had these great associations with South Wales. So in 1716, the copperworks in the Athabee closed. The business partners dissolved their enterprise.

So then Lane and Pollard turned their attention to a new venture, which they locate in near Swansea. So the new site opening 1717, and was named the Landor Copperworks, which is where the football ground is now, that's where the Swansea City Stadium at dot com, what used to be known as Liberty Stadium is in New York.

So he was taking advantage of Orlando, because of its situation and sort of where it was placed, it was able to take advantage of local coal mines, which had been in operation since medieval times, and the River Tawi was very navigable. Since medieval times, there were coal mines. Yeah.

But it was sort of industrialised in the 1800s. So people needed access to coal. They were bell pits. Do you want to get it in a bell pit? What's a bell pit? Yeah, tell me about that. Basically, Alice is right. The pits in place, like, where was coal was really into the surface?

So you could just dig. And Rutcher was one place, actually. That's it. You could just dig and there was be coal. And a bell pit, which was, a mirthus, pockmarkly. They did it, an infrared sort of thing is pockmarked them. you basically dug until it collapsed on you or somebody. That was it. No way.

There were in deep minds. They were called bell pits. Like a family. Yeah, with your brothers or something, they would go down there. And you dig and until it collapsed in on itself. And they were the bell pits. They were incredibly dangerous.

So were these groups of people doing that? Or are these individual prospectors or whatever the phrase would be who happen across parts of land, they're just trying their luck? What would that be? Yeah, but sometimes you'd have sort of common land and things like that.

I mean, what happened was, let's tell you this, because the aristogynes was so intermarried, the land in South Wales nothing with that. No, I know, yeah. They do a job for us, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they're bringing the tourism. But it's, the land in South Wales was owned by a family that were based in Scotland in the Isle of Boat. So the Mark was a boot. And of course,

it was like coming in on a lottery for him to mine his land. He got a percentage. But they, hadn't been there for like hundreds of years. I think they've married into the Talbot family, which was a total bit of us named on. But there's no sort of interest in Wales at all.

They were just one of these families at all in bits of land all over Britain. And of course, when South Wales took off like a rocket, he got to move to Cardiff. And they became the richest man in the world. At one point, the boots were the richest man in the world. Those bell pits, Tom, it was like a game of Jenga, but a game you really didn't want to lose.

But it really mattered. High Jeopardy Jenga. John, you mentioned the infrared scans of the old bell pit on a documentary. I think I've seen this documentary because they found some of the first people to settle in Mertha. They found they were living in their hills, but they were just going off in the day to dig these pits and living among the hills. Yeah, they sort of, this imagery they found. They were like, it was far more than they ever thought. And obviously, some of the first ever railway lines were laid in Mertha.

And I think, you know, there's always a strong debate that Murtha, the steam engine was invented in Murther. was a tributtal. Oh, really? It was a cornish thing. And it ran from Murtha down to Aberkennan. So there's always a big sort of thing that we were kind of forgotten and the steam whistle was invented in Murtha.

Quite a lot of things, because it was such a frontier town. And like Ellis said, nobody really lived there. It was like, I think the population was like 200. And then within 50 years, it was like 25, and then 30,000 people. Because the biggest towns in Wales were placed like Haverford West. That's right, yeah. Northern.

Bangor, some traditional old towns. The South Wales valleys, nobody lived in the South Wales valleys. And of course, when they discovered coal, and everybody's very proud of this, when they discovered Welsh steam coal, this was the best quality coal in the world. In fact, it was such good quality here. And as I was serious to my miss this, it had to mix it with not an inshacore coal, which was crap, to make coal that didn't burn so bright. So there was like this Welsh stuff was actual dynamite to create an energy.

Too strong a flame, profit. Wow. Amazing. But it was smokeless. And what they did was, the reason why, it was ultimately they got the contract for the Royal Navy. and they had a race outside Parliament on the Thames two steamships and one had north-east coal and one had South Wales coal

and the Welsh thing absolutely pissed it when it, so it won the contract and of course, because the Royal Navy was so prestigious every other Navy in the world wanted Welsh calls they just couldn't get enough of this stuff

so suddenly the South Wales valleys and they discovered steam coal in Abercanid in Mertha so Murtha's always like very proud of being first on everything in industrial history and it was found by a woman who had a pit in Abacanad and her husband had died and she had this pit and she found this seam of coal.

And Burton tells this great story. You might have seen it where. And it's true, my father's to talk about it. The seam of coal is such a specific size. Oh, yes. And it runs from the Basque, under the Bay of Biscay, round South Wales,

right across the Atlantic into Pennsylvania. And they were telling me, you could drop a Basque miner in a pit in Wales and an American miner in a pit in the Basque country and they would recognise it straight away. It'd be this perfect height. That's amazing. It runs under the Atlantic.

Dan to the Atlantic, yeah. And they'd all recognise it. And they were really, really proud of it. And they would sort of like, they would talk about the pit itself and the face, like a woman. It was temperamental. And they became so skilled,

but some minors, they could hit, they would work out with the hit, and they could bring out tons of call in just one hit. They were unbelievably skilled at bringing this stuff out. I'm really proud of it. Fascinating, isn't it? They were so proud of being down there

and being so skilled. But the only country that I, have more migrants to it than Wales was the USA. That's right, yeah. Because there was just so much work. So the population in a century went from almost 600,000 to over 2 million. Yeah. Because there was just, you know, iron and coal and then steel and there were docks as well

because you needed to service those industries. It was just so much work. It was growing at a quicker rate than New York at one point, wasn't it, in the 1890s? Yes, that's actually something we will come to. I'm doing a section later about Carl. And that's exactly it, that exponential growth and how it compared to the rest of the world. But we'll move back to Swansea.

We've suddenly been saying for a few years now, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Only as he would listen. So in 7026, Lynn and Pollard, they've got wider business investments. They went sour because they got caught up in the boom and bust of the South Sea bubbles. The South Sea Company, which was formed in 17-Lemm,

to help reduce the national debt, gained a concession in 1713 to introduce the slave trade into South America. Since this was part of the Spanish Empire, the idea or the prospect of such introduction was limited. So the whole venture was basically a Ponzi scheme, one underwritten by insider trading and backhanders and government corruption

and the use of company money to buy company shares. So as the company's share price ballooned and investors sunk more and more of their wealth into the venture, I feel bad about this. Sir Isaac Newton owned 20,000 pounds worth of shares, for instance. Right. Wow. I mean, I feel bad for dragging him into it.

But it was only a matter of time before the boom turned to bust, and it did in 1720. So in the aftermath of the bubble... You knew the gravity of the danger they were in. Oh, very nice. Ring the good radio bell. Now, the... Lane and Paula

divested with the Landau Copperworks and a different set of investors as both the business. So these were Robert Morris and a London-based merchant called Richard Lockwood. So the new company, Lockwood, Morris and Co. They continued operations at the original site until the 1740s,

when a new works was built a little bit further at the Tawi Valley in what is now Morriston. Morristan, yeah. So under Morris's leadership, Blandor Works, dominated industrial production in Swansea. So there's a new infrastructure investment

in the form of the Morris Canal, later known as the Trojiva Canal, and the town became synonymous with copper production. So when Morris died in 1768, the business was taken on by his son, so John Morris, who developed Morrison as a kind of company town for his workers. So the company was planned by William, the community, I should say, was planned by William Edwards, a chap and minister, and an architect from Eglosilan, who was famous for his old bridge, which opened in Pontiprith in 1756, and for his involvement in the early construction of the Kvathvaian works in Murtha in the 1760s.

Now eventually the Morris operation was eclipsed by the Havod Copper Works located very near where the Swansea City Stadium is and that was owned and operated by the Vivian family. Now they'd come to Swansea from Cornwell at the 19th century when John Henry Vivian arrived to become manager of the Copperworks at Pencloud and Lacher which is to the west of Swansea. So they established their own works in the east of Swansea in about 1810

and within a few decades the Haavod Copper Works was the largest anywhere in the world. Copper ore brought in vast quantities from Sweden, Cuba and South America. This wasn't just any old ore. It was refined on location. So say at the El, Cobra mines in Cuba using Welsh coal.

And then that high quality mineral was brought back to Swansea where it was worked into a final product. So it's an enormous global enterprise. Yeah. It's got Swansea right to its heart. But it wasn't, you know, we've got to say,

this. I think, I would imagine that Johnny struggles with this. I think Welsh people in the main, especially people who are interested in the history, are very proud of of, you know, the industrial past in Wales. Like, I'm immensely proud of, but you know, there's a dark side to it, obviously. So the people at El Cobra,

for instance, were enslaved people from Africa and indentured labourers brought over from China, although there were some specialist or miners brought over from South Wales and Cornwall to lead operations. But one thing went along with this vast and very, very profitable enterprise, and that was what filled the hold of the ships travelling from Swansea to Cuba, so they'd be full of returned, refined copper

on the return leg, but there was something, but what, you know, there was something to go along with a coal on the way out. Well, it turned out that the Cubans loved pottery made in Swansea. Right. So to meet demand, those potters came up with new patterns and designs, what they called, you guessed it, Cuba. What it was, the images of the island far away that had made Swansea, you know, town, dirty and smelly and busy and noisy, but also very rich. By 1845, 55% of the world's copper was made in Swansea, which is extraordinary. Like the whole, it dominated the entire city.

Yeah. And also the Cubans, they love pots made in Swansea. So are these pots depicting Wales, depicting Swansea, depicting... No, they're depicting Cuba. Cuba? Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. How strange. That's amazing. We still talk a lot about the history of iron and steel and coal in Wales, but I think the copper thing, aside the city itself has been slightly forgotten, Johnny. Would you agree with that?

Yeah. I mean, funny enough, I did that charity thing down in... Oh, yeah. And I did an interview and it went viral because I went, oh, I was created back to them in Swansea, and I said, you know, and I mentioned coal, iron, asked me something about it. I said, of course, copper in Swansea. and so many people went, I'm glad you said copper for Swansea because, like you said,

I'd always thought of Swansea as, you know, Copperopolis and that kind of thing, that he had a slightly different history. I mean, the Murtha was interesting. Murtha was like, for a, I shouldn't even know, Murtha was always a very left-wing town.

Famously, you know, sort of the Murther Rising was hushed up because it was the most successful workers' uprising in British history. They took the town over for three days. They'd organised themselves so well. They'd have to send the Highland Infantry, from Brecken to quell it

and ex-soldiers amongst the workers were firing down on British soldiers they were organised themselves so they sort of went to Chartism thing and Peter Lou were massacres basically but the Murtha rising frightened on the death mainly because they were organised and also because of the Welsh language was still the most

spoken in the town and it terrified the authorities that they were these rebels were all communicating in Welsh and within a generation of Murtha they absolutely tore the language out of the town that they They made sure that all the kids learned English because they were just thinking,

we can't have this at a town where people are rising up. It's the first time the red flag was ever raised, wasn't it? Alice, was in Mousa? Yeah, in 1831. Really? You get T-shirts in Mourke. You get T-shirts and Mourth. They've got the rebels since 1831.

Yeah, they do. Loads of people wearing them. So they were very proud of this. And then that was sort of one of the, you know, the shocking things when they bought it Brexit and Murset. And obviously, you know, the reform have made such big gains. in those old traditional industrial places because the irony is

Murtha is the best example of an immigrant town you can possibly imagine. It was literally built on immigration because there was nobody living there. They needed the labour and people piled in from all over Europe. Lots of English, lots of Irish, but mostly Western North Wales.

Yeah, well, Dick Pendering, who was... Hang? He was, yeah, sort of... He was a labourer. So he was... He was... hang for it and his final words were all

um oh our gloythum agamweath which means oh lord here is iniquity. Acid, yeah. Here is injustice. I said injustice yeah. Yeah. And somebody somebody on their deathbed in Pennsylvania admitted that they were the person. It's basically a Scottish shoulder called Donald Black

got stabbed and immersed it to be stabs to be blacked for years. He didn't, he didn't, yeah, he did. It was a saying and he didn't die but they hung Penderin. But again, Talking about Life Trip, they shot and killed so many of the... I didn't never realize how many of the workers got, were killed, were fired on by the soldiers.

And quite a lot of people died in that uprising. The thing with O'ar, Gruitha Magamu, oh Lord, here is iniquity or here is injustice. I do say that for things like, well, I can't download an app properly. Yeah. It's frustrating, Larend, I get it. It's frustrating. Oh, Lord, here is iniquity.

Right, so that is, that's copper in Industrial Wales, but there's still lots to come. There is still iron, and then, I'll be honest, the one that blows it all out of the water, coal. The money, the size of that industry is just unbelievable. That'll all be coming in part two. So if you want part two right now, you can go to patreon.com for slash ohwater time. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Oh, water time is now on Patreon.

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