Neath Abbey Ironworks Records
The records of the Neath Abbey Ironworks are held at
the West Glamorgan Archive Service in Swansea, Wales.
The location is on Swansea Bay between the Maritime Quarter and Swansea
University. The address is:
West
Glamorgan Archive Service,
Civic
Centre, Oystermouth Road,
Swansea
SA1 3SN
Phone
01792 636589
See: http://www.swansea.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=44455
The following
is a description of the records as taken from the Archive Collections web site (http://www.swansea.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=56785)
A rare collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century engineering
drawings from South Wales has been purchased by the West Glamorgan
Archive Service through generous grants from the PRISM Fund and the Friends
of the National Libraries.
The
Neath Abbey Ironworks collection had been held on deposit at the West Glamorgan Archives in Swansea for over two decades but the
owner had in the last few months indicated his wish to sell the collection and
gave West Glamorgan Archive Service first refusal
before offering it on the open market.
The
foundry at Neath Abbey in South Wales was built in 1792 and leased to the
Quaker firm of Fox and Company from Falmouth in Cornwall. It continued in
business with a variety of different partners until 1875 and then, after an
attempted revival, closed for the last time around 1885.
The
ironworks' period of operation coincided with the invention of railways and
steamships, the opening up of the South Wales coalfield and the growth of
industry throughout the UK. It was also a time when the area of Swansea and Neath was a world centre for
metallurgy. It produced a variety of products, including railway locomotives,
engines for ships, machinery for gas works and pumping
and winding engines for mines.
The
archive collection just acquired consists of over 8,000 engineering drawings which were produced as working drawings from which
the commissioned machinery was made. They include plans of locomotive and
railway engineering plans dating from 1826-1892; ship and marine engineering
plans, 1817-1883; gas installations, 1820-1874; and general plans of machinery,
1792-1882.
Kim
Collis, West Glamorgan County Archivist, said,
"This collection is of high importance because it is a rare survival from
across a large time period of the industrial revolution. Neath Abbey Ironworks
produced machinery for a geographically wide client base and while much of the
trade was local to South Wales orders came in not only from the rest of the
United Kingdom but also for mining operations in Mexico and South America,
reflecting the growth of British entrepreneurship in the western hemisphere.
"The
plans themselves are detailed and finely drawn. The level of care taken in
their execution reflects high standards of workmanship for which the foundry
had a reputation. The variety of machinery produced is directly reflected in
the plans, and the collection is therefore an invaluable resource to anyone
interested in the history of techniques of manufacture and mining and of transport
and industry."
Further descriptions of
the records taken from
http://www3.swansea.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=DD+NAI&pos=6
are as follows:
Reference No. D/D NAI
The foundry at Neath Abbey in South Wales was
built in 1792 and leased to the Quaker firm of Fox and Company from Falmouth in
Cornwall. It continued in business with a variety of different partners until
1875 and then, after an attempted revival, closed for the last time around
1885. The ironworks' period of operation coincided with the invention of
railways and steamships, the opening up of the South Wales coalfield and the
growth of industry throughout the UK. It was also a time when the area of
Swansea and Neath was a world centre
for metallurgy. It produced a variety of products, including railway
locomotives, engines for ships, machinery for gas
works and pumping and winding engines for mines.
Administrative
records of the Neath Abbey Ironworks (D/D NAI)
Plans of gas installations and
work for gas contracts, 1820-1874 (D/D NAI/G)
Locomotive and railway
engineering plans, 1826-1892 (D/D NAI/L)
Plans of machinery, 1792-1882
(D/D NAI/M)
Ship and marine engineering
plans, 1817-1883 (D/D NAI/S)
Plans of the Neath Abbey Iron
Works, 1813-1881, including ground plans, plans of buildings, inventories of
stock, plans of engines and machinery for the furnaces, boring mill, fitting
shop, rolling mill, wharf, Cheadle Works and Neath Abbey Gas Works (D/D NAI/W)
It
appears that the records are almost exclusively
plans. As noted previously,
if the engineer or draftsman that drew up the plans
were to have signed the drawing, locating those
produced by Hopkin Thomas
would be a significant find. However, based on the
reproductions contained in Prof.
InceÕs history, that custom
does not appear to have been followed at the Ironworks.
Return
to the Neath Abbey Ironworks page.
About
the Hopkin Thomas Project.
Rev. July 2014