Welsh Journals

A SWEDISH VISITOR TO FLINTSHIRE IN 1760 By WILLIAM LINNARD During the eighteenth century, the rapid emergence of Britain as an industrial power made this country a magnet for foreign visitors, eager to see the new tech- nological developments and to learn from them. Among these visitors were several from Sweden, a country then actively developing its own considerable resources of copper, iron and lead. It was quite natural, therefore, that these Swedish visitors should take a keen interest in ore-mining and the associated metallurgical industries, and that south Wales and north-east Wales should attract their particular attention. Although some of these Swedes recorded their observations and impressions of their visits to Wales, they appear to have received little attention by Welsh historians. In the 1720s, Henrik Kalmeter visited the copper works at Neath and Swansea ('the greatest in England'), and also the iron works at Pontypool. In 1766, Benct Qvist Andersson visited Merthyr Tydfil where he witnessed the birth of the great Cyfarthfa works and reported: 'another costly and fine works, which is now under construction and being established by the River Tuff [sic] not far from Marter, a small village near the river in South Wales in Glamorganshire'.1 On his travels through England and Wales in 1753-5, Reinhold Riitker Angerstein visited Pontypool and Monmouth to see the iron works, wire mills and tinplate works, and went to Holywell and Warrington to inspect the lead mines, smelters and the copper works of Thomas Patten. Angerstein sent detailed accounts of the copper- smelting, brass-making and copper-rod-making operations back to Sweden.2 Although his interests were mainly botanical and his visit was restricted to south- east England, another Swede, Pehr Kalm (a disciple of Linnaeus), noted in his diary in 1748 various interesting items of agricultural machinery, and gave the earliest-known description of the Welsh female seasonal workers who travelled each year from Wales to Middlesex and Kent for the summer harvesting of hay, grain, hops and fruit.3 1 S. Rydberg, Svenska Studieresor till England under Frihetstiden (Uppsala), 1951 (Lychnos Bibliothek 12). 2 R. R. Angerstein, 'Journal of a journey through England in the years 1753, 1754, 1755', translation in Liverpool University Library, Rhys Jenkins MS. 7 1 (22); the original documents are in Svenska Arkivyran, Stockholm. P. Kalm, Resajournal over Resan till Norra Amerika (Helsinki/Copenhagen), 1966. For a full account, see W. Linnard, 'Merched y Gerddi yn Llundain ac yng Nghymru" Ceredig- ion 1982 (in press).