The Copper Mine Graveyard in Swansea | Time Team | Timeline

hi everybody and welcome to this documentary on timeline my name is Dan snow and I will tell you about history hit TV it's like the Netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit TV you can either follow the information below this video or just Google history hit TV and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video I'm in Swansea in South Wales at the center of an industry that changed the world and it's not steel and it's not coal and it's not slate it's an industry intimately connected with the slave trade that employed thousands of people and generated inconceivable wealth for the privileged few if I'd been standing here at 200 years ago this is what I would have seen known as copperopolis it was copper smelting that put Swansea at the very heart of the Industrial Revolution [Music] we want to discover why this sleepy backwater became the birthplace of the global copper trade [Music] lick that floor and you're dead and that's what ties this simple copper bracelet to one of the worst crimes in human history as usual we've got just three days to come up with some answers but let me tell you without copper we wouldn't have any walkie-talkies we wouldn't be able to work that digger we certainly wouldn't have any GF is all pretty crucial stuff well maybe not the geofence [Music] this idyllic parkland hides virtually all trace of an industry that once dominated the world in terms of its scale skill and product [Music] and the load of rubbish banked in there Rajesh corpo production once devastated this landscape bleaching deadly toxins into the ground and sending countless workers to an early grave the real danger is getting any of the soil in your mouth so gloves at all times and then when we come off-site gloves off wash hands all that kind of stuff [Music] could you just come up just a little bit earlier there's a beginning of a wall coming here be nice to know where he's coming that's enough that's enough fortunately the vegetation is quite safe so we're diving straight in to see what's left of one of the first copper works in Swansea White Rock well it just wouldn't be time team if we went for the easy option this is so typically Frances we've got this massive field we can excavate wherever we like and look at the area that he's clearing right in the very corner a new acrophobia the thing is this is where it all began right you see this picture here and that building you can see there with the long roof which is known as the great workhouse was one of the largest structures of its type in the world with its but it originally continued right the way along all those shrubs for about 300 feet so it was a huge great long thing what was going on inside it well as you can see from all the smoke coming out of it out of out of a chimney they had furnaces in here and this was where copper was actually melted down from the or you know the process known as smelting according to the original 1730's lease white rocks great work house contained 20 furnaces it was a major player in swans his copper empire sitting next to the river tower in southwest Wales Phil's aim is to find the furnaces and discover how they make copper solid while Mary Ann's discovering what impact the industry had on this area pay me a picture of what it would have been like to say 300 years ago routinely in the 19th century people describe the valley itself as being somewhat akin to Dante's Inferno noise smoke bustle and so on very complete contrast of what we see around us today what was it that meant that this industry developed in Swansea in the first place because there's no copper here is there no that's the key point there are no copper mines anywhere near Swansea that the nearest mines are in Cornwall it was more economical to bring the copper to Swansea to the source of coal rather than the other way around the crucial point being that around 4 tons of coal were needed to smelt one ton of copper but this time swansea had a vast source of cheap coal right on its doorstep and this coal puts Swansea at the epicenter of global copper production by the mid eighteen hundreds there were over 200 copper works here over in his trench feels going great guns in his quest for one of swans his biggest furnace houses [Music] punched through human that's got a no straightedge so presumably that has been punched through yeah that that's a construction cut if you like for that to put that in across the river from White Rock was hammered one of the largest copper works in the world built a century after white rock today it's a stunning Karabakh have or didn't shut up shop until the 1980s so there's a risk that later buildings may have trashed any 19th century archaeology luckily we've got some insider info on what was once here so there there are some parts here that still survived from the original copper works furnaces right Ronnie Maddock was formerly have odds engineer and the last man out the door when the works closed what would you like us to find while we're here for the three days what were they about two years it's been left I you don't what have you what's under these nobody knows okay but there's a chance then if we do find something you like to see if you had to come down here and look at it and say fingers crossed we find something here while geophys start their survey black and white rock Phil's made a huge dent in the great workhouse a trench with a peculiar dress code why I've been told to wear all this kit now come you uh well I mean this is a contaminated show yeah but you've got a mask on I know Tony and you don't to where one other thing is we had rain this morning right there's no dust if there was dust we'd ask you to wear one of those that's why we're wearing gloves this ground is so polluted from the days of copper smelting there's arsenic the sulfuric acid that's cadmium burns lead cyanide lick that floor and you're dead I think well you can see we've actually got a bit of wall surviving there now that's 18th century stonework and then this is the end wall behind us again 18th century and then the walls coming off in that direction and heading off like that and then in the interior here there were furnaces at least that's what we're told but it's very interesting but Seth I'm gonna put my mask back up yes go back to your surgery doctor it might be toxic but Phil's trench is looking terrific within the eighteenth-century walls the archaeologists are unearthing intriguing brickwork which will need cleaning up before we can categorize it just want to bear that down but that's worth walk coming in there by the 1850s Swansea was smelting over half of the world's copper and importing and exporting on a global scale Hobart was swans is largest copper works set up in the early eighteen hundreds but whether we can find anything that's left hinges on the geophys results surprisingly the magnetics appear to have worked and I mean although it's not that clear on the picture here we've got some really really strong responses that easily indicative of heavy firing and that could go with the sort of furnaces so how would the early furnaces that we're getting on the other side the white rocks I'd differ from what we're going to get here the overall basic operation is the same but size might well be significantly bigger right okay well I think we don't enough talking it's time we did some digging okay then armed with John's geophys trench two goes in here marked on the plans as furnaces but not everyone's convinced we've got our trench in the right place they would honestly say I'd be I'd be 99.9 percent there was raw furnaces by there that patella what 70 years ago they were better then I'll have to tell Francis that maybe they've got the map turn around the wrong whoever's right we now face the huge challenge of getting through tons and tons of demolition rubble in the search for intact archeology [Music] over the river at White Rock Phil's definitely in the right place the floor oh you bet that's a floor Francis that's all worming coal ashes it they're filled you're getting off the play what a it must be the remains of a furnished floor and look at that that's what you want that's the business fill the trench is crammed with slag and burnt debris all hot clues we're edging closer to a furnace the copper works here Joe sold for Riverside space less than a mile from Swami's port by the early 1800s the port was the Spaghetti Junction of the seas with barges bringing copper ore in and ships taking finished goods out [Music] this river was the artery linking our sight to the world [Music] Alex lived from 10 minutes from the port and we're already our side I know we're really actually not far from the sea at all but this is a porch where that boats would have been brought up and unloaded so all of the copper ore that we've been coming from places like Cornwall and Devon it would arrive here and then get taken into the furnaces are you gain a sense of how it's all fitting together within the landscape definitely you know the more I see this landscape the more I see the interconnectivity you know the use they would have made of the river the use they would have made of the coal seams as well and of course the access Swansea has to the Atlantic and the wider world white rocks private dock is an indication of the huge volume of goods coming in and out of the works but after a whole day of digging has Phil actually got anything furnished like in his trench a lot of brick there's actually more stone Tony the brick is only the layer editions but the bricks are actually quite interesting what we've actually got in here is well I suppose you have to say a brick structure thank you yes in other words I don't really know what it is but you can see we've got some bricks in here and then here we've got an arch and then in here we've got black and then in here we've got another arch a more brickwork out there so we've we've got a written definite pattern of something that's built into the wall Francis have you got any idea what this pattern of arches is well yes Tony I mean the fact is all the brickwork seems to be covered in slag if there's a lot of copper and there's a lot of coal dust it's got to be something to do with furnaces of that there is no doubt how are we going to expose what was here in the 18th century well I think the key Tony is going to be to extend the trench in that direction and with any luck we'll actually come up with our 18th century furnaces there's a heck of a lot of work to do over there we're probably talking about doubling the size of the trench we can easily do that and if it really solves the problem of why we're here and explains this building then it will be worth the well I don't know what we're fine tomorrow but I'll tell you one thing we're gonna be digging a hell of a big hole beginning of day two here in Swansea where as you can see were shifting an indoor mass amount of Earth we're looking for evidence of the very first major copper works in South Wales which isn't that brick wall which is Victorian Doris in that floor which is also Victorian but what we're looking for is hang on before we have a conversation could you stop Thanks so if the original family is under here why are we looking over there it's all it's all a matter of scale Tony the fact is as you said this is the first major copper workings in this area it was large we we're dealing with large furnaces in a large building it's a large complex we need a very large trench to really find out what's going on here okay that's the archaeology but there's a dark secret about the copper industry which we haven't even started talking about yet but which Frances feels very strongly about because you've got a personal connection to it haven't you what is this secret in a word turning slavery and what's the link between your family and slavery what my full greats grandfather my great-great-great great-grandfather was one of six Quakers who set up the original anti-slavery committee and what's the link between slavery and copper well copper was exported from Wales in large quantities as part of the complex trading arrangements to do with the slave trade Mary Ann you've started doing some research on this yeah look at this this is a manila this is essentially a piece of jewelry conspicuous wealth that was traded for people to the African slave owners so it's not a shackle no it's worn on the wrist it's a prized treasured object that you traded for men women and children the commercial ambition that fueled the copper works here in Swansea is the same commercial ambition that fuelled the global trade in people Manila's were white rocks bread-and-butter made from copper coming out of the very furnaces Phil's hoping to find in his trench white rock pioneered the revolutionary Welsh method of producing virtually pure copper it was laborious but highly skilled copper ore contained a host of impurities that had to be removed to produce a malleable durable copper metal the Welsh method put the earth through a sequence of furnaces to remove unwanted chemicals first it was roasted in a cow sign furnace then the roasted ore was melted down in a smelting furnace to extract the metal leaving a waste product slag the Welsh method set new standards computer earliest smelting processes had produced inferior rather shoddy copper Cassie and Jerry want to find out just how shoddy the Welsh are using a kind of mixed or complicated or and they have to go through this complicated series of stages to finally end up with good pure copper and is it gonna be the Welsh method that you're gonna show us here no we're going to do it in the old-fashioned way which is just layering charcoal and and or together we're using about a bag of sugars worth of crushed ore and from that we'll be expecting around enough molten copper to fill a mate Benton [Music] but even traditional smelting is a complicated process the oils melting point is 1,200 degrees when Cassie and Jerry must regularly break off the slag [Music] whoosh you think rod right in and see if there's any metal at the bottom somber force drove technological advance pure copper meant big money and slavery was big business it's a horrible question but how many of these do I need to buy a person perhaps somewhere in the region between 10 and 50 depending on on the physique the strength of the slave concerned could this Manila have been produced at White Rock to buy slaves Tomas Costa who founded White Rock we know was involved in the slave trade with his partners and we have evidence from three voyages that he and his partners undertook that were slaving voyages one to by Afra another carried slaves to Jamaica and a third to North America and I suppose the most compelling piece of evidence is the fact that on the White Rock site there is a building we know from a print of 1744 described as the Manila house I know another thing we're keen to find on this site is the Manila house we don't know where the Manila house sits on our site but Alex is determined to find it using an old aerial photograph of white rocks ruins so I'm just gonna go over there and literally pace out your building to work out where we've got these walls here right okay gets traded [Music] as Alex grapples with the complexities of stride counting geophys are throwing all they've got at finding more buildings meanwhile Phil's made a breakthrough this complex brickwork and blackened floor suggests burning so Cass is abandoned her smelting to take a look tell me the magic word have we got a first we have got a furnace we are stood on it here is one more right that's the other other wall and this is a pic after you've done all of your roasting or your smelting that you dropped the ore into this is a large possibly cow styling furnace cows own cows I mean that gives us the first process of the oil the cow sign furnace roasted the or drawing waste gases up a chimney but when it comes to furnace basis well they're all pretty similar so to identify the function of this furnace we need to extend the trench so we can see more of it it's crucial we determine which type of furnace we're digging only then can we piece together the layout and sequence of all the furnaces in the great workhouse across the river Tracy and Raksha have been looking for have odds 19th century copper thermoses yesterday we weren't sure if this trench was even in the right place all of a sudden this amazing brick surface which we think is part of the furnace here how'd you know as a furnace well can you see the way that these bricks are kind of mushed up and they're really powdery and they seem to be breaking and falling apart yeah it means that there's been intense heat on them and they've turned this like amazing swirl of red and orange and pink it just means that there's been lots of burning happening in this out but we're also getting lots of times we've got copper and we're getting really nice fresh bits of slag as well fantastic because you can see bits of green in the that's coppery right yeah it's a furnace off it's between the two sides the race is underway to see who can identify their furnace first and in his trench at White Rock Phil's unearthing the entire furnace floor in an effort to find out [Music] there's a hard layer de manera and was ashamed of it you'll feel it as you can see we've been getting on really well over there but that's just one corner of an enormous field and we haven't even looked at the rest of it although that's not true of Alex who's been prowling around looking for lumps and bumps have you got on well reasonable success for example here we've taken the configuration of buildings on an earlier map this is a map from 1822 which we've put on to the modern Ordnance Survey so we get an idea of what kinds of other buildings were on the site but interestingly one of these buildings here is called the Manila house now what I've done here is I've pasted out very roughly across this courtyard area to give me an idea of where this wall would have been how does Alex's work tie in with what you've been able to find out from the geophys well the one thing Alex hasn't told you is we've got a nice level field and the reason it's level is in the 60s apparently they came in with bulldozers earthmovers and there's about two meters of rubble Frosty's we've got a bit of a problem haven't we we can't rely on the geophys and we've got to rely on the width of Alex's strides well I'm not too worried eternium it's just like going back to the 19th century archaeology you know you dig holes to find things you don't worry about GF is down you go and if there is an 18th century Manila house down there then you'll find it if our gamble pays off we could be on the verge of discovering a manila house and our first direct link with the slave trade afternoon day two here in Swansea where Mary Ann and I are surrounded by evidence of the copper industry which dominated this area in the 18th and 19th century over lunch some of the archaeologists were saying this is a site of world importance that's right we're not just telling the story of one copper manufacturing in a small bit of South Wales this is a story with global importance and the archaeologists started to get good that furnace over there is looking very promising and a furnace over there we've got two two furnaces and we're only halfway through the day we're wasting no time opening a third trench where we hope the Manilla house once stood let's hope we get some decent finds from here because there's been a distinct lack of them elsewhere I mean this is amazing because that you've got Charles Davison and son perhaps Buckley Cheshire made England I mean that's really nice as bricks go it's pretty impressive over in his trench Phil's grappling with something a bit less obvious I've never seen a thing like that before in my life he's already got a furnace floor but no date no upstanding structure and no idea what type of furnace it was we need answers to work out the overall layout of the great workers we have a scrape off of the area shifting more spoil and enlarging the trench could shed more light on the story luckily we're digging next door to a stadium and they're willing to stump up some extra labor in the shape of some top rugby stars the auspice now Ospreys your Stadium the Liberty Stadium is overlooking these sites in did you know anything about the industrial archaeology that's on your doorstep to be honest until we got here today we didn't have a clue what was going on or what being here you guys ready to lend a hand I've got you some more muscle power will you send over as much muscle power as you can all right lads you're on this is the quarry face of knowledge the object exercise is to face that and then once the barrel is full move it to the hey gentlemen the spoil tip is yours [Music] oh come on Shane [Music] I got sheep you lived around here 100 years ago you'll be playing rugby you know give me an air show your right ear rang you got a better deal dear do that although life as a copper worker was no walk in the park skills were recognized and rewarded [Music] the copper bosses while turning a blind eye to the brutality of slavery treated their own workers with compassion how well will workers looked after here well in case in the case of the habit works pretty well the Vivian family who established the works in 1809 1810 do I think take their responsibilities quite seriously towards their workers what they begin to do is lay out a workers settlement that becomes known as trevor thean our street-by-street they provide rows of terrorist cottages for their workers these are terrorist houses that have attached to them quite significantly large gardens or yards with provisions for pig stars keeping chickens coal houses and so on and I can see that they've established a have odd copper work school a church I mean there's a whole community here isn't there the Travian housing estate home to generations of copper workers still stands today how many of you in the house I saw the family yeah oh look at that may I get it done ticket oh yes and you all grew up in the Harvard all in the one house and did you work it works as well don't know work don't know work don't know works down the works don't know work don't know works don't work gosh that's a family connection yeah five generations of Ronnie's family worked in have ods furnaces all trained in the Welsh method of putting copper through several furnaces to purify it after six hours work Cassie and Jerry have gained some insight into the Welsh methods advantages over traditional smelting processes would you would you like to see results yes please oh well if you just step now you're both laughing and how ridiculously small did you expect to get more coarse why do you think you've got so little to get it all right all the way through to ensure you end up with a good beaker full of copper ease is really difficult and somewhere it just went offline and we couldn't recover it but what's actually more importantly Tony is that if we put this on this machine and we analyze it in fact these Peaks here show that in fact mostly we've got iron and copper and it also has the sulphur there so it's not even good copper oh no it's happy to be rubbish but that proves why the conventional method of copper smelting for this ought just doesn't work and that's why they had to go to the laborious rigorous method at the Welsh process was the only way to get copper out of these ores [Music] the Welsh method gave Swansea such an advantage that workers were made to sign confidentiality clauses to keep it secret white rock put their ore through 20 furnaces one of which we've got in films trench and thanks to our rugby playing free labor he's now uncovered another room in the great workhouse doorway in here but we don't know how big the doorway is so gives us that encouragement I know the archaeology in this end of the trench hasn't got anything to do with Phil's furnace at the other end it's stuffed with 19th century bricks and slag to reveal what it is cue more digging and a monster of a swirl [Music] in the relative calm of travillian Mary and Alex are exploring where copper men and their families used to live vivianne street named after the family who founded the hard work exactly and then here on this corner we therefore have the original copper work school but it wasn't exactly clean living around here until the 1940s residents had to cope with have odds overspill so here we go get to the end of the road there's that end terraced house I see there just stood there yes I can Wow you can see the spoil heat look at that basically would have come down here come down into the road there that's extruding it must have dominated the landscape it must have been you know just was enough but a mountain here have ODS waste was a byproduct of its sheer industriousness and in her trench traces finally got what looks like the finished article coming out of the furnace and we got one big lump from here this is looking really interesting I think we're really good if Joe could have a look at that Jarrod you're on you could identify what this is right basically saying it's got effectively 93% copper in it there's a trace of zinc trace of arsenic a little trace of lead so this place is at the end of the process at the moment I'd be happy to say that it's virtually on its way to being pure this is a fantastic find it means we can say this furnace was a smelting one where all was melted down a metal cast on a floor this club is so pure it means our furnace must be towards the end of the Welsh process [Music] time to bask in the glow of a good days digging at the local social club well the archaeologists really moved forward apace today it really has Tony we've we've we've cleared an enormous area and we've actually got our furnace which is really really good news the other thing is yesterday you gave me a lot of stick and you said all I had in my trenches was bricks yeah okay and that they were all Victorian bricks well look at this I've got a brick yes but this one is a special brick this is a handmade 18th century brick and what's more it's come out of the furnace look at that slag attack well we've got our own bit of metal as well see that that is 95% copper made in Swansea and that came from what the carpark that's right yeah wonderful not quite as big as yours but much purer what about tomorrow Francis I think the key thing is to go for that Manila house you know with the bracelets but it's going to be a very very deep hole so it's gonna be quite a challenge and then I want Phil to find the furnace for certain yeah well I've got I've got a brick hundreds of bricks well a great day today and hopefully it'll be even better tomorrow beginning of day three yesterday this was just virgin grass but today as you can see we've dug a great big hole why because we're looking for the mysterious Manila House what's the mystery well we don't know what it was for was it called the Manila House because it's where they manufactured the Manila bangles which they used to trade with the slave traders or was it just an office space what do we know about it we definitely know that Thomas Kosta one of the founders of the White Rock site built this essentially in order to get involved with the slave trading and Manila's are a key aspect of that we also know that it is labelled on this map as the Manila house and pay office but beyond that archaeology has to answer the questions and as they are killed as you told us anything is we've got a stone wall over there and stone normally means 18th century but we're not sure yet there's no stopping Matt as he gets digging to find the manila house and to understand what it took to make her Manila we're crafting one of our own starting with the sand mold that needs to be hammered flat I take it this isn't the most skilled part of the process though well you're doing a great job thank you great job thank you very much brilliant having failed to smelt copper yesterday hopefully we'll have more luck with casting it we're using a manila bracelet to create a depression in the sand then pouring molten copper into the hollow that's our two-piece mold and then once the copper alloy is ready we'll be pour in it white rock would have churned out thousands of these bracelets using copper made in the great workhouse for two days Phil's been puzzling over what sort of furnaces found now it's all cleaned up it's clear this was a cal sign or roasting furnace tell me what it would have looked like well we've got a square which one it's very large and fire over that way got the floor just about this level or drops in from the top the coppers dropping in 310 at a time all gets raked out into this pit at the bottom fire over there sucking the flames all here to be taken away up that massive chimney stack and then how does it drop through into the pit well what you've got is you've got coals positioned down on the sides where we're standing this is where the guys with the rabble errs would stand which is like a long kind of Reiki Reiki number and you poke it in through the hole and you rabbil it out and it drops through a tube into this pit just here and then how does the ore get from the raking out pit out there what would happen with the raking out pit is your furnace man is in charge of that so he comes in at like 4:00 a.m. and he shovels out your 3:00 ton of ore like that and then it's the same guys job to come and get the coal in for the next day so with these big wheel baracy brings all the coal they'll need for the next firing so I mean once all that cow sign or has been shoveled out where does it go then well it should move to the next furnace down in the process so it's going roasting melting roasting melting as it works its way down this looks like one of the first furnaces in the great workhouse sequence work here was grueling average life expectancy was below 40 they were affected in their lungs and stomach and frequently would spit blood when the conditions became unendurable they'd have to rush to the door and it's not just what they're breathing in it's the temperatures that they're working in as well it's suggested by dr. Thomas Williams in 1854 that a copper man could sweat about 600 gallons in a year and consume as much as 1,000 gallons of water to replace it yeah awful these men are suffering long-term slow burning poisoning from these really noxious chemicals that they're ingesting into their bodies in Phil's trench the archaeologists are getting close up and personal with those horrendous conditions at this end they've done test bits hoping to find another copper furnace but they've actually uncovered something very different what's happening is it is actually filling in a lot of the gaps of the later history of the works here because when we started to go through the the topmost layers of that test pit over there squeezed in between the bricks we've got evidence of lead so the only way that lead could have got in there would have been in a mountainous state so we know that in here they're processing it but have we got fines have we got fines yes we've got fines oh you've got the heavy fire so absolutely if that is the product of the lead working it should have been transported out because what you're holding in your hands is money if there's something wrong with it then it should be going back into the processing to refine it so that it can be made into good lead to send out so it seems White Rock started as a copper works for diversified into lead production by the end of the 19th century when it became cheaper to make copper abroad unfortunately there's nothing left of the huge furnaces that once dominated this building it's a similar story in Tracy's trench this frame is part of a second furnace but the issue of where these furnaces came in the sequence is now in doubt Jerry's re-examining what yesterday we thought was a lump of pure copper from this trench right it's not pure copper because if it was pure copper that face would be gold and red so where does that put these Habad furnaces in the copper manufacturing sequence Jerry's hot-footed it over to Tracy's trench with his latest results it's actually copper sulfide so it is actually not the final product of Swansea copper but it's about two-thirds of the way so we know that that casting floor is about two-thirds of the way through the whole process that somewhere further down would have produced the pure copper well that's a real result of his excellent result these two furnaces both date to the early 1800 s if they're two-thirds through the sequence it means we're looking at a colossal building that would have dwarfed white rock and churned out tons of copper what's more we've discovered a product made here of global importance okay I need your expertise to decode this for me this is a copper nail and it was used to hold copper sheets on the holes of boat because it protected the timber and it also meant that they could go faster because there was less drag yeah and have had this zapped and it's always pure copper so it's it's if you use this with a normal hammer it would just bend and break and be useless so this is a lovely little indication of one of the most major industries Swansea ever had the sheathing boats industries I mean without these the Navy didn't have its empire conquest these this held together the British Navy that made global conquest possible it's actually really important now so tiny artifact global story exactly these nails not only help the Navy together but enabled slaving vessels to ship thousands of Manila's in our efforts to make a Manilla we've now reached the critical stage I have to say my heart is beating a little bit faster this is cool it's not very cool the pouring tongs go on [Applause] that is man tech making this artifact has tested nerves and skill and it's fallen to Alex to see whether it's all been worthwhile and you can already see that beautiful rosy sheen of the metal fantastic there's our manila unfortunately our reconstruction might be the closest we'll get to white rocks Manila business finished yeah it's all cleaned up really beautifully Tony I think their first phase we've got we have part the original building which is this stone wall coming across here and then there's another piece of it going along there there's a doorway in it there and there was a doorway in it there do you reckon that's the original Manila house I think it is it's made of stone which seems to which is the earliest phase over there yeah it looks really quite a high quality doesn't it Chris some big pieces it's lovely stone facing going along here have you got any evidence of what was going on in the Manila house have you got a copper furnace or anything like that in this trench in a word no [Music] like so much of copperopolis the manila house was largely destroyed by later buildings and then demolition it's not the result we wanted and in films Trench suddenly things are looking shaky as well this morning we all felt really triumphant because we thought we'd got the one thing which we were after which was an 18th century copper furnace but this afternoon there's been a lot of head-scratching and a lot of head shaking because it now transpires that everything is not what we thought Phil does that mean we haven't got a furnace no we've definitely got a furnace it is a cow sign furnace but it is not for copper it is for ledge oh that's disappointing is that well no it may be it's disappointing if we wanted to find a copper furnace but it is not altogether surprising this is the last phase of operation that was in this building and we do have evidence for copper furnace as well look at that wall down there you see those green on that brick there yeah I can see that very clearly yeah so you reckon there were copper furnaces here it's just that of the later end of the history of this building they were replaced by LED ones absolutely you got to remember these these furnaces were working pretty much day in day out they would wear out and they needed to be replaced so there may well be evidence of an 18th century copper furnace down below here [Music] it's not quite the result we were hoping for but it does reveal how the white rock works adapted to the times when copper demands waned they simply switched to lead smelting but copper was the bedrock of Swami's metal industry and our work has gone some way to recapturing the heyday of copperopolis we've seen that the techniques developed here produce the best copper the world had ever seen through our trenches we've revealed some of the most important buildings in Swansea story and learned how they outlived the copper burn and there's only one way to finish a dig like this in South Wales take it away gentlemen [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 108,039

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history

Id: NHEKrh4hDqA

Length: 46min 48sec (2808 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2020