The Shanty Evaluation - Dyfed Archaeology Report 2010

Prepared by Dyfed Archaeological Trust For: Nicholas Pearson Associates Limited

THE SHANTY, PENLLERGARE,

SWANSEA:

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVALUATION

DYFED ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRUST

RHIF YR ADRODDIAD / REPORT NO. 2010/21

Mawrth 2010 March 2010

THE SHANTY, PENLLERGARE, SWANSEA:

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVALUATION

Gan / By

K MURPHY

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y gwybodaeth y mae’n ei gynnwys

The report has been prepared for the specific use of the client. Dyfed Archaeological Trust Limited can accept no responsibility for its use by any other person or persons who may read it or rely on the information it contains.

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The Shanty, Penllergare: Archaeological Evaluation

Dyfed Archaeological Trust Report No 2010/21

THE SHANTY, PENLLERGARE, SWANSEA: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVALUATION

CONTENTS PAGE

SUMMARY 1

INTRODUCTION 2

Project Commission 2

Scope of the Project 2

Report Outline 2

Abbreviations 2

THE SITE 3

Location 3

Archaeological Potential 3

METHODOLOGY 3

RESULTS OF THE EVALUATION 4

CONCLUSIONS 5

SOURCES 5

FIGURES 6

Figure 1. The presumed location of The Shanty shown on a digitised version of the Ordnance Survey 1877 map. Scale: grid at 100m intervals. North to top. 6

Figure 2. Location of the excavation trenches shown against the topographic survey by Gwalia. Scale: grid at 10m intervals. North to top. 7

Figure 3. Location of trenches against a digitised version of the 1877 Ordnance Survey map. Note: the trenches are only approximately located in relation to the map; there may be an error of up to 5m. North to top. 8

Figure 4. Suggested reconstructed layout of The Shanty. 9

PHOTOGRAPHS 10

Photograph 1. The Shanty in c.1852 looking towards the northeast. 10

Photograph 2. Taken during the evaluation from approximately the same viewpoint as Photograph 1. 10

Photograph 3. The Shanty in c.1852 looking north. 11

Photograph 4. Looking north from the approximate viewpoint of 11

Photograph 5. The Shanty taken after 1856 from the south. 12

Photograph 6. The site during the evaluation from the south from approximately the same position as Photograph 5. T 12

Photograph 7. The Shanty in c.1852 looking northeast. 13

Photograph 8. The evaluation taken from approximately the same location as Photograph 7. 13

Photograph 9. Trench 3 looking south. 14

Photograph 10. Looking north with Trench 5 in the foreground towards the large flat slab in Trench 4. 14


Dyfed Archaeological Trust Report No 2010/21 1

THE SHANTY, PENLLERGARE, SWANSEA: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVALUATION

Summary

An evaluation on the site of a mid 19th-century summerhouse/boat house known

as The Shanty on the Upper Lake, Penllergare, Swansea demonstrated that

archaeological remains had been substantially destroyed by engineering and

other works in the 1980s.

The Shanty was probably built at the same time as the Upper Lake dam was

constructed, in the late 1830s. It was photographed many times by John Dillwyn

Llewelyn in the 1850s. It is not shown on the Ordnance Survey 1:2500 First

Edition map of 1877; it had presumably gone out of use by then. It was a rustic

structure, with a shingle roof supported on untrimmed tree trunks, resting on a

stone plinth/steps. The photographs show that it functioned as a summerhouse

and boathouse, with the dock for a small boat situated between the stone

foundation and the west bank of the lake.

Apart from some loose, large stone blocks and a spread of stone from a

foundation make-up deposit, virtually no trace of The Shanty was found during

the evaluation.



INTRODUCTION

Project commission

Nicholas Pearson Associates Limited, acting on behalf of the Penllergare Trust, on 14 December 2009 asked the Dyfed Archaeological Trust to undertake an evaluation on the site of The Shanty, Penllergare, Swansea. Dyfed Archaeological Trust provided a written scheme of investigation in response to this request. This was approved on the 26 February 2010. The fieldwork took place on the 22-23 March 2010.

Scope of the project

The evaluation has been designed to provide information on the character, extent, date, state of preservation and significance of any surviving archaeological deposits within the site area in order that an assessment of the impact of any future works on any remains can be determined.

Report outline

This report describes the location of the site along with its archaeological background before summarising the evaluation results and the conclusions based on those results.

Abbreviations

Sites recorded on the Regional Historic Environment Record are identified by their Primary Record Number (PRN) and located by their National Grid Reference (NGR).



THE SITE

Location

The Shanty is a 19th-century summerhouse/boathouse located on the edge of Penllergare Upper Lake (Glamorgan-Gwent HER no. 04954w, NGR SS 6243 9921), on the outskirts of Swansea. It was probably built at the same time as the Upper Lake dam was constructed in the late 1830s. It was a photographed many times by John Dillwyn Llewelyn (the owner and ‘creator’ of Penllergare) in the 1850s (Photos. 1, 3, 5 and 7) and is shown on a painting by his daughter, Emma Charlotte. It is not shown on the Ordnance Survey 1:2500 First Edition map of 1877; it had presumably gone out of use by then.

The approximate location of The Shanty can be estimated from studying the historical illustrations and the 1877 Ordnance Survey map (Fig. 1). It was located on the west bank of the Upper Lake on the north side of a small bay. Photographs of the 1850s show that The Shanty sat approximately 1.2m – 1.5m above the water on a stone foundation with rustic stone steps leading down to the lake. It was a rustic structure, with a shingle roof supported on untrimmed tree trunks. The photographs show that it functioned as a summerhouse and boathouse, with the dock for a small boat situated between the stone foundation and the west bank of the lake. A path ran alongside the lake and past The Shanty. A suggested layout of the site is provided in Figure 4.

There is now no trace of The Shanty. A modern track over a sewer pipe runs along the lake edge. Close to the site of the Shanty this track is slightly further to the west than the original lakeside path and probably about a metre higher. Immediately to the north of The Shanty are large silt traps retained by stone-filled wire-basket gabions and concrete. It seems likely that waste material resulting from these various engineering works, which took place in the 1980s, was dumped over the site of The Shanty, raising the ground level by 0.5m to 1m. The lake was dredged (at the same time as the engineering works?), but is now largely silted up again. The surviving lake height is approximately that of the historic lake height – roughly 49.17m above sea level.

Archaeological Potential

There was potential for the stone foundation, the rustic steps and the boat dock to survive beneath the 1980s dumped material.

METHODOLOGY

Initially the intention was to open two machine-excavated trenches (Trenches 1 and 2 – Figs. 2 and 3). However, once on site it was deemed necessary to open several other trenches. The trenches were excavated using a 6-tonne tracked machine with a 1.8m wide toothless ditching bucket. The trenches were excavated to a maximum depth of 1.5m. The excavation took place on the 22-23 March 2010. The trenches were back-filled on the afternoon of the 23 March.

It was intended to hand-excavate and clean any revealed archaeological features, and then record these using conventional archaeological techniques. However, little of interest was revealed, and therefore recording comprised photographs and sketch drawings. The location of the trenches and salient details were recorded using a Trimble TST (Total Station – electronic distance measurer) using station locations set up by a surveying company (Gwalia). All heights quoted in this report are related to the data points established by Gwalia, which are expressed in metres above sea level.

Several volunteers organised by the Penllergare Trust assisted in the evaluation.



RESULTS OF THE EVALUATION (Figures 3 and 4, Photographs 1 - 10)

Trench 1

Trench 1 was positioned on the bank of the silted lake. Removal of recently deposited superficial silts revealed a layer of stone rubble and silt that overlay a geotextile mat, which was seen to overlie a compact layer of stone rubble and brick. The stone was grey/blue in colour and not from a local source. These layers date to the 1980s when the track/sewer was constructed, and it appeared that the geotextile had been laid to provide stability to the stone rubble. The trench was immediately back-filled.

Trench 2

Trench 2 was parallel to, and 4m to the north of, Trench 1. It was a maximum of 1.3m deep, its bottom a little above the height of the current lake. The main fill of this trench comprised black silts, which probably survived the 1980s dredging. A layer of flat, shattered, local stone lay on the bottom of part of the trench. The deposits revealed at the western end of the trench were similar to those in Trench 1, comprising compact rubble derived from the track/sewer construction.

Trench 3

Trench 3 ran approximately north to south and was c.1.5m deep, with the bottom being up to 0.15m below the current lake level. It was entirely filled with silt, tree trunks (with sawn ends), large branches, pieces of plastic and car tyres. Several large stone blocks lay in the silt at the junction of this trench and Trench 4. This deposit continued below the bottom of the trench. It is probably mostly derived from the excavation of the silt traps in the 1980s, with the stone blocks representing demolition remnants of The Shanty.

Trench 4

This trench was roughly parallel to Trench 2, c.8m to the north. It was up to 1.5m deep at its eastern end, but only 0.8m at its western end. A large slab of local stone (1m x 0.6m 0.2m) lay horizontally towards the western end of the trench. The surface of the slab was at 50.65m OD, approximately 1.48m above the lake surface. It was initially considered that this was an in situ paving/step slab of The Shanty. However, further investigation demonstrated that it sat on modern rubble, tree trunks and silt. Silts predominated at the eastern end of the trench with just an occasional presence of stone blocks, but stone dominated to the west, with the layer composed almost entirely of stone rubble. The larger stone blocks were locally derived, but most of the smaller stones were not from a local source. Some crushed wire frames for gabions were present at the west end of the trench.

Trench 5

This was a short spur trench running south from the large stone slab in Trench 4. The bottom sloped down from north to south. It was excavated to a maximum depth of 1.3m. The upper deposits comprised modern compacted stone and silt, which overlay broken slabs of local stone. This underlying layer seemed to be about 0.5m thick, but it was not investigated in detail.



CONCLUSIONS

It is clear from the evaluation that the remains of The Shanty have been virtually destroyed. This destruction occurred during two, probably related, episodes: the construction of a track/sewer and the building of silt traps/lake dredging.

A considerable amount of engineering was involved in order to construct the track/sewer, including the provision of a firm foundation, evidenced by the stone rubble in the western ends of trenches 1, 2 and 4. Rubble was also dumped into what was probably in the 1980s a silted, marshy inlet to the lake in the vicinity of Trench 5. It is likely that at this time any remains of The Shanty were spread and mixed up with this imported stone. The large blocks of stone revealed in the trenches are the result of this destruction. During or after construction of the track/sewer, material comprising silt, fallen trees, plastic and other modern debris, was spread across the site when the silt traps were excavated. This material was mostly revealed in Trench 3. It is likely that heavy machinery used during silt trap excavation stood on hard standing laid over the site of The Shanty causing more damage to the already substantially destroyed archaeological remains.

The broken slabs of local stone towards the base of trenches 4 and 5 (and also spread as far as Trench 2), underlying the modern material, are most probably remains of the make-up for the foundation of the Shanty, laid down on the valley floor prior to the flooding of the valley in the late 1830s. Figure 4 is a conjectural map of The Shanty as it may have been in the mid 19th century.

SOURCES

All sources in this report are taken from the Penllergare Database, maintained by the Dyfed Archaeological Trust.



Figure 1. The presumed location of The Shanty shown on a digitised version of the Ordnance Survey 1877 map. Scale: grid at 100m intervals. North to top.



Figure 2. Location of the excavation trenches shown against the topographic survey by Gwalia. Scale: grid at 10m intervals. North to top.



Figure 3. Location of trenches against a digitised version of the 1877 Ordnance Survey map. Note:

the trenches are only approximately located in relation to the map; there may be an error of up to 5m. North to top.



Figure 4. Suggested reconstructed layout of The Shanty.



Photograph 1. Top. The Shanty in c.1852 looking towards the northeast.

Photograph 2. Bottom. Taken during the evaluation from approximately the same viewpoint as Photograph 1.



Photograph 3. Top. The Shanty in c.1852 looking north.

Photograph 4. Bottom. Looking north from the approximate viewpoint of Photograph 3. The figure is in same position as that in Photograph 3.



Photograph 5. Left. The Shanty taken

after 1856 from the south.

Photograph 6. Below. The site during the

evaluation from the south from

approximately the same position as

Photograph 5. The figures are in

approximately the same position in photographs 5 and 6.



Photograph 7. Top. The Shanty in c.1852 looking northeast.

Photograph 8. Bottom. The evaluation taken from approximately the same location as

Photograph 7.



Photograph 9. Above. Trench 3

looking south.

Photograph 10.Left. Looking north

with Trench 5 in the foreground

towards the large flat slab in

Trench 4. Note the slabs of local

stone on the slope in the foreground.



RHIF YR ADRODDIAD / REPORT NUMBER 2010/21

Mawrth 2010

March 2010

Paratowyd yr adroddiad hwn gan / This report has been prepared by K Murphy Swydd / Position: Trust Director Llofnod / Signature Dyddiad / Date 30 March 2010 Mae’r adroddiad hwn wedi ei gael yn gywir a derbyn sêl bendith This report has been checked and approved by J Meek ar ran Ymddiriedolaeth Archaeolegol Dyfed Cyf. on behalf of Dyfed Archaeological Trust Ltd. Swydd / Position: Head of Field Services Llofnod / Signature .............…....…………....... Dyddiad / Date 30 March 2010 Yn unol â’n nôd i roddi gwasanaeth o ansawdd uchel, croesawn unrhyw sylwadau

sydd gennych ar gynnwys neu strwythur yr adroddiad hwn

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The Shanty Evaluation - Dyfed Archaeology Report 2010