From Copperopolis to The Copperologist
This is the story of how copper found its way back to its family.
In 1694, Bristol metallurgist Dr John Lane became involved in a copper-smelting partnership near Neath with John Pollard and Thomas Collins. When the partnership dissolved in 1716, Lane and Pollard looked towards the Lower Swansea Valley for a new location. The area offered everything copper smelting required: rich seams of coal, a navigable river and easy access for ships carrying copper ore from Cornwall.
In 1717, Lane and Pollard established the Llangyfelach Copper Works at Landore, Swansea’s first major copper-smelting works. Boats brought copper ore from Cornwall directly to the works, while coal was obtained close at hand.
In 1724, Robert Morris arrived from Shropshire to manage the business.
In 1726, Lane and Pollard’s business failed following financial difficulties associated with the South Sea Bubble.
The following year, Robert Morris joined London merchants Richard Lockwood, Edward Gibbon and Edward Monington in taking over the Llangyfelach works. The business became known as Lockwood, Morris & Co., with Morris managing its Swansea operations.
Around 1748, the company expanded farther up the Tawe Valley by establishing the Fforest Copper Works.
My great-great-great-great-grandfather Thomas is the earliest member of my family whom we can prove worked in Swansea’s copper industry, although sons usually followed fathers in terms of career choice in this era, so his father was probably a copper worker too.
Thomas kept sheep on a smallholding called Glyncasnod as well as working in Swansea’s copper industry. He worked at either the Fforest or Landore works but we're not sure which one.
We do know for sure that Thomas’ son John (my great-great-great-grandfather) did follow in his father’s coppery footsteps.
At this time, Britain suffered from a serious shortage of low-value coins. This created a fundamental problem for industrial employers, who needed small change for wages and everyday transactions.
In 1811, several copper companies in Swansea and South Wales began issuing their own penny and halfpenny tokens. These were not official currency, but they circulated locally and could be exchanged for goods at participating markets and shops.
Some Swansea copper tokens travelled considerably further than the workers who earned them. They were accepted in place of currency even in the distant land of London.
By 1823, nine copper works lined the Lower Tawe Valley. Swansea had become the centre of a rapidly expanding international copper industry, drawing ore from Cornwall and Anglesey and exporting finished copper through its busy port.
During the decades that followed, ships brought increasingly rich ores from much farther afield, including Cuba, Chile and Australia. Between the 1770s and 1840s, the Swansea district routinely produced around one-third of the world’s smelted copper.
The industry generated extraordinary wealth and innovation, but both came at a considerable price. Workers endured dangerous conditions, smoke filled the valley, and the land and water were heavily polluted.
Swansea’s copper works also profited from colonialism and slavery, producing goods used to purchase enslaved Africans and copper sheeting for the hulls of ships that transported them.
Thomas' son John (my great-great-great-grandfather) appears in the 1841 census simply as “copperman”, which sounds less like a profession and more like an excellent superhero. Precisely which foundry he worked in remains a mystery because the Swansea Valley was by then positively on fire with furnaces.
Later on, John had a family and moved to Burry Port so he could become a furnace man at Elkington & Co. We can be certain of that employer because Burry Port only had one copperworks.
John’s youngest son David (my great-great-grandfather) was born in Burry Port. It seems there was little time in Victorian Burry Port for any adolescent lounging around because, by the tender age of sixteen, David was already labouring at the copperworks.
David carried the family's copper working connection into a third generation when he advanced to the role of smelter at Elkington & Co. He eventually had a daughter named Joyce.
With David's daughter Joyce, the family’s working connection to copper ended. She left Burry Port for Penarth, and over the next few generations the furnaces, foundries and coppermen quietly slipped out of the family story.
By the time I was growing up in Swansea, some of the old family names remained, but nobody ever mentioned their copper connections. I was not even taught at school that Swansea had once been known as Copperopolis
or had led the world in copper production.
The story simply disappeared.
I'd always been a little obsessed with copper but every copper bracelet, ring or pendant eventually disappointed me. Air reached the surface, the metal tarnished, and the beautiful copper I loved became dull and dirty-looking.
So I began experimenting. I wanted to transform copper with verdigris and flame to create a tiny piece of art, then stop time before its surface could change again. From these experiments emerged my no-tarnish copper jewellery, double-sealed first with a sealant then between a glass dome and stainless steel.
I did all this without knowing anything about my family's history with copper.
Then, just one week before my first copper pendants went on display at Oxfordshire Art Weeks 2026 alongside my paintings, my sister asked me:
“Did you know you are the fourth generation copper maker in the family?” and told me this story which she had recently uncovered.
Only then did I realise I was continuing a family story that had begun over two centuries earlier.
Each collection contains just twelve individually named copper pendants. Every one is unique. Once collected, it can never be reproduced exactly.
Perhaps one of my copper pendants will be a gift for a copper wedding anniversary, or a graduation, or a significant birthday. One day, it may pass to one of your own descendants who never met its first custodian. The names and occasions will change, but the thread of copper history will continue.
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