Thursday, June 11, 2026

South Wales

Cardiff is the major city of south Wales. It is built around a Norman castle, but has only been a major city since the Nineteenth Century. The modern city of Cardiff was made by the shipping of coal from the mines of Wales. Much of the population of Cardiff today is descended from English and Irish migrants, who came to work on the docks. This was once the busiest coal port in the world.

England and Wales united in 1536, Scotland joined in 1707. The union of England and Wales took place during the reign of Henry VIII (the eighth), who was from the Welsh Tudor Dynasty. The British royal title "Prince of Wales", the next in line to be king, is a recognition of the medieval Welsh kingdoms becoming part of Britain, but the holder of the title does not have to be Welsh.

"South Wales" is just a geographical designation, and not an official name. But it's name is reflected in the Australian state of New South Wales.

I am English by birth, but I was born within walking distance of Wales and have some Welsh ancestry.

The ancient name of Wales, Cambria, is still seen in the names of towns and streets. The ancient name of England is Albion, of Scotland is Caledonia, and of Ireland is Hibernia.

Here is Cardiff Castle. There are actually several castles around Cardiff. In fact, it is said to have more castles than any city in the world. The first five images are from Google Street View.






The scenes begin inside a printing shop. 

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you so wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4799042,-3.175713,3a,75y,330h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-fr04T8ZqkCc%2FVG4OhMDrfFI%2FAAAAAAAAA9o%2F99dvfe2OFO0mX-wIwq9NAJAiK_DtpICQQCJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-fr04T8ZqkCc%2FVG4OhMDrfFI%2FAAAAAAAAA9o%2F99dvfe2OFO0mX-wIwq9NAJAiK_DtpICQQCJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya84.61333-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i5632!8i2816

These four images of central Cardiff are from Google Earth.





Another thing that Cardiff is known for is the Cardiff Bay Barrage. There is a very wide tidal range at Cardiff, that is the difference between high tide and low tide. This meant that extensive "mud flats" were exposed for most of the day, which were unsightly. 

Tides are so important here because the narrowing Bristol Channel compresses the incoming tide, indicated by the arrow in the following image from Google Earth. This creates the second greatest tidal range in the world, after Nova Scotia. Cardiff is shown by the red dot and Bristol by the yellow dot.


The idea arose of building a dam across Cardiff Bay, with sluices to control the flow of water so that there would be, in effect, a permanent high tide. This opened the possibility of waterfront development, because the edge of the water would always be in the same place.

The project was highly controversial. Opinions of the proposed Cardiff Bay Barrage ranged from brilliant to too expensive to ridiculous to both ridiculous and too expensive. Then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made clear her opposition to the project. But south Wales is left field when it comes to politics, and the opposition of the staunchly conservative prime minister seemed to be all the more reason to move forward with the project.

It turned into a massive civil engineering project that is today considered as a brilliant success, and was a great bonus for the city.

This is a set of sluices and a control building for the Cardiff Bay Barrage. The gates allow the water that flows into Cardiff Bay to continue on to the sea, but keeps the level of water in the bay always at the former high tide level. This makes it different from the dikes in the Netherlands, in that it holds water in rather than keeping it out.

Here are some scenes around the Cardiff Barrage, the dam that separates Cardiff Bay from the sea, so that the bay is no longer tidal. The first two images are from Google Earth and Street View. In the first image you can see the mud of low tide to the left and the water that is held in to the right.



https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4500767,-3.1650533,3a,75y,107h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-7BTRnr3m0XQ%2FVh_pZ6s3L7I%2FAAAAAAAAB_0%2FmE7yZ4Bp71EQyREb4L1jkCKWDdQWPLo6ACJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-7BTRnr3m0XQ%2FVh_pZ6s3L7I%2FAAAAAAAAB_0%2FmE7yZ4Bp71EQyREb4L1jkCKWDdQWPLo6ACJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya312.9225-ro0-fo100%2F!7i10240!8i5120

Welsh voters rejected the idea of having a national assembly that was separate from England. But there is a strong emphasis on the Welsh language. Welsh was the majority language in Cardiff until Victorian times.

In the past, the British Government made an effort to get everyone to speak English. There used to be a Celtic language called Cornish, in Cornwall, that is now extinct. But the effort to suppress Welsh was less successful. Today the BBC actively supports broadcasting in the Welsh language.

According to the census, about 15% of people in Wales can speak, read and, write in Welsh. Those are concentrated in the western part of Wales, furthest from England. It is not like French in Quebec. Welsh is on signs everywhere, and is on radio and television. But there are no daily newspapers in Welsh, and hearing people speak it in daily conversation is elusive.

One way to know if you are in an area where a significant number of people speak Welsh is that it will appear first on bilingual traffic signs. Around Cardiff, that is not the case so English appears first. Image from Google Street View.


Welsh is a Celtic language. W and Y are used as vowels. The city of Cwmbran is pronounced as "Coom-bran". There is doubling of some letters to represent different sounds, dd, ff and, ll, which are not the same as the singular letters together.

All along the border between England and Wales is the familiar sign of:

"Croeso i Gymru", meaning "Welcome to Wales". Image from Google Street View.


The reason that the Welsh language is so different from English is that the Welsh people are considered to be the descendants of the original people of Britain, while English people and their language are the descendants of settlers from northern Europe, such as Angles, Saxons, Danes and, Vikings. This is why Welsh is a Celtic language but English is related to the other northern European languages.

This is the area around Llandaff Cathedral, starting inside the cathedral from the 12th Century. This is not in central Cardiff because remember that Cardiff was the town that grew around the castle, but was not a major city until the Nineteenth Century. There is thus no very old, centrally-located, Cardiff Cathedral. There is the cathedral in central Cardiff that was built in the Twentieth Century. The first four images are from Google Earth and Street View.





https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4957754,-3.21813,3a,75y,105.48h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-aNcimTa66Ww%2FU8_aoDnm-qI%2FAAAAAAAABvU%2F77i0mdFlw7skvXwwo19EmOVjtABwDvy0gCJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-aNcimTa66Ww%2FU8_aoDnm-qI%2FAAAAAAAABvU%2F77i0mdFlw7skvXwwo19EmOVjtABwDvy0gCJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya310.5653-ro0-fo100%2F!7i9216!8i4608

Here is an older residential area of Cardiff, to the west of the central part of the city. There are Welsh names around Philadelphia, such as Bryn Mawr and Bala Cynwyd, and any Philadelphian would feel right at home in Cardiff's row houses. The first two images are from Google Street View.



https://www.google.com/maps/place/Wales,+UK/@51.4683456,-3.1848729,3a,75y,87.46h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1soSWfsD2sVZgUIzRblqc7SQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0%26panoid%3DoSWfsD2sVZgUIzRblqc7SQ%26yaw%3D87.46161875131779!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x486434b66c1c0fed:0x1ebb71bc8aa5e8a2!8m2!3d52.1306607!4d-3.7837117!16zL20vMGo1Zzk?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUxMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Another major city in south Wales is Newport, to the east of Cardiff. This is a medieval city that, like Cardiff, grew up around a Norman castle. This was a more important port than Cardiff until the mid-Nineteenth Century.

Here are some scenes around Newport, including the ruins of the castle. Notice that we are starting in front of the BBC Cymru office. This is the BBC channel which broadcasts in Welsh. "Cymru" means "Welsh" in the Welsh language. The first two images are views of central Newport. The third and fourth are of the Transporter Bridge and the fifth is of the castle.






The central business street of a city in Britain if often named "High Street", the equivalent of "Main Street" in North America.


To the west of Cardiff is another city on the coast of south Wales, Swansea. Unlike Cardiff and Newport, Swansea specialized in metals, rather than coal. Workers in Swansea were so skilled in separating metals from their ores that ore was often brought from other countries to be refined in Swansea. The city's nickname used to be "Copperopolis".

What Swansea does have in common with Cardiff and Newport is that it also grew up around a Norman castle. Isn't it ironic that the three major cities of south Wales are built around castles that were originally put there to defend against the native Welsh people? Welsh cities center around castles, just as English cities center around cathedrals.

Here are some scenes around the center of Swansea. The first two images are from Google Street View.




Here is a look around a residential area of Swansea, with the very Welsh name of Brynhyfryd. You can be sure that you have crossed the border and left England when you see a name like that.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6427027,-3.9480799,3a,75y,281.29h,93.96t,357.71r/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1ssGn1qbMgzo65xGngCRjEfA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DsGn1qbMgzo65xGngCRjEfA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D6.954975%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 

Carmarthen is a town in southwest Wales that is not on the coast. It has a very long history and was important in medieval times, before the Industrial Revolution made the coal that was handled by the port cities so important. This used to be the most important town in Wales. These six images of Carmarthen, including the castle, are from Google Street View.







Tenby is a seaside resort town that goes back to the days before mass transportation brought inexpensive vacations in sunny places. The first of the following scenes are at Tenby's medieval walls, much of which is still standing. There is a tidal island, meaning it is only an island at high tide.

If you see the palm trees, you are not imagining it. Tenby, like Cornwall in England, are the places in Britain that are most exposed to the Gulf Stream, which brings warming water. So yes, palm trees can grow in Britain. The first five images of Tenby are from Google Street View.






In this image, from Google Earth, the island is part of the mainland at low tide but not at high tide.



Not far from Tenby is Pembroke Castle. This is where Henry VII was born. The royal House of Plantagenet had fallen into civil war between two of it's cadet branches, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. A long war in France had ended and it was easy to hire private armies. Henry had inherited the Lancaster line and led it to victory in what is known as the War of the Roses. Because the symbol of the Lancastrians was a red rose and that of the Yorkists a white rose. This is not the same as the later civil war between the Royalists and Oliver Cromwell. 

Henry VII was thus the first king of the fabled House of Tudor. He had a daughter, Margaret, who married a king of Scotland. This would lead to a personal union between the countries, and the beginning of the House of Stuart, when the Tudor line died out. The British monarchy doesn't really have dynasties because the royal line between successive "houses" has been continuous and never permanently interrupted by force. Three images of Pembroke Castle from Google Street View.




Monmouth is within walking distance of where I was born. It is built around a castle, but the castle came later. Monnow Street, where the following scenes begin and the main street of Monmouth, has been used since ancient times. The famous stone arch, on the bridge over Monnow River, is from the Thirteenth Century.

I can remember, from early childhood, when I was first brought to look in the shops on Monnow Street. We usually went to Gloucester for shopping but one day we came here.

One thing that should be more widely-known is that, in medieval times, the idea of making a simple warm hat out of sheep's wool arose in Monmouth. This resulted in what was known as the "Monmouth Cap". What this led to was the ubiquitous knit caps, sometimes called a beanie, that are seen in cold climates across the world today.

Also near Monmouth is Tintern Abbey, which we saw in the posting on this blog, "The Reformation At 500", February 2017. The first two of the following seven images of Monmouth, from Google Street View, are of the Norman Arch.








Monmouth was the hometown of Charles Rolls, of Rolls-Royce fame. The company is known for it's iconic car but Charles Rolls, a race car driver, was more interested in aircraft. Henry Royce did not share the interest in aircraft, and the two separated. Charles Rolls would ultimately be the first Briton to die in a plane crash. 

This is the statue of Charles Rolls in Monmouth. He is holding a model aircraft. Image from Google Street View.


The estate of Charles Rolls' family near Monmouth was like a palace. Image from the Wikipedia article "The Hendre".


Rolls-Royce, best-known for the car, would ironically end up putting most of it's effort into producing aircraft engines, which would have fulfilled what Charles Rolls wanted for the company. Image from the Wikipedia article "Rolls Royce Holdings".



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