Swansea RFC

Swansea Rugby Football Club is a Welsh rugby union team which plays in the Welsh Championship. Its home ground is St Helens Rugby and Cricket Ground in Swansea. The team is also known as The Whites because of the primary colour of the team strip. The club is a feeder club to the Ospreys.

History

The club was founded in 1874 and, in 1881 it became one of the eleven founder clubs of the Welsh Rugby Union.

In the early twentieth century Swansea RFC was an extremely successful club. For four consecutive seasons Swansea were the unofficial Welsh champions from the 1898/99 season through to 1901/02, coinciding with the heyday of Swansea's first star player Billy Bancroft. Under the captaincy of Frank Gordon the team would later go on a 22-month unbeaten run, from December 1903 through to October 1905. During this period Swansea appeared to be under-represented at international level. Gordon himself went uncapped throughout his entire career, and apart from Billy Trew, Dick Jones and Dicky Owen, the only other internationals in the senior team were forward Sid Bevan (1 cap), wing Jowett (1 cap) and outside-half Phil Hopkins (4 caps). Trew (29 caps) was an outstanding centre who was accepted as one of the most important players in the evolution of Welsh rugby, while Dicky Owen (35 caps), although only 5 foot 4 inches tall, was an incredible tactician.

Swansea

Swansea (/ˈswɒnzi/ SWON-zee; Welsh: Abertawe [abɛrˈtauɛ], "mouth of the Tawe"), officially known as the City and County of Swansea, is a coastal city and county in Wales. It is Wales's second largest city and the UK's twenty-fifth largest city. Swansea lies within the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan. Situated on the sandy South West Wales coast, the county area includes the Gower Peninsula and the Lliw uplands. According to its local council, the City and County of Swansea had a population of 241,300 in 2014. The last official census stated that the city, metropolitan and urban areas combined concluded to be a total of 462,000 in 2011, making it the second most populous local authority area in Wales after Cardiff. During its 19th-century industrial heyday, Swansea was a key centre of the copper industry, earning the nickname 'Copperopolis'. Since 2011, Swansea has started to expand into a larger region known as the Swansea Bay City Region. After combining with other councils, it now includes Tenby and other parts of West Wales, its population including these areas an estimated 685,051. The chairman of the new region is Sir Terry Matthews

HM Prison Swansea

Coordinates: 51°36′54″N 3°56′56″W / 51.615°N 3.949°W / 51.615; -3.949

HM Prison Swansea is a Category B/C men's prison, located in the Sandfields area of Swansea, Wales. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service, and is colloquially known as 'Cox's farm', after a former governor.

History

Swansea is a Victorian prison built between 1845 and 1861 to replace former prison accommodation at Swansea Castle. Both male and female inmates were incarcerated there until 1922, at which point all females were transferred to Cardiff Prison.

Execution site

A total of 15 judicial executions took place at Swansea prison between 1858 and 1958. All of the condemned prisoners were hanged for the crime of murder. Their names, ages and dates of execution are:

District of Swansea

Coordinates: 51°37′48″N 3°56′46″W / 51.630°N 3.946°W / 51.630; -3.946

The Swansea district (Welsh: Abertawe) was one of the four local government districts of West Glamorgan, Wales from 1974 to 1996. It was formed from the areas of the county borough of Swansea and Gower Rural District, from the administrative county of Glamorgan.

It inherited the city status of the county borough and so was styled as the "City of Swansea", and was governed by Swansea City Council. On March 22, 1982 the city was granted letters patent raising the mayor to the dignity of Lord Mayor.

The district was abolished in 1996, when it was merged with most of the Lliw Valley district to form the larger City and County of Swansea. The last leader of the council was Cllr Trevor Gordon Burtonshaw.

References