In 1786 the Gloucester Journal could justly call Swansea "...the Brighton of Wales".

Even though the first copper works had been built as early as 1717 at Landore, the town had been able to strike a delicate balance between the arrival of the copper industry and the desire to keep Swansea basically a port with a thriving regional tourist trade.

Despite the lack of royal patronage and its relative remoteness from the tourism markets of inland Wales, Herefordshire and the West Country, Swansea was still able to capitalise on the late 18th century craze for sea bathing.

This resulted in some decent Georgian housing springing up on land near the mouth of the river called the Burrows during the late 1770's. You can see them in the drawings done by Thomas Rothwell in the 1790's as part of his work for the Cambrian Pottery which was located alongside the River Tawe in Swansea.

William Jernegan

The key exponent of this work was William Jernegan (1750-1836) a London-born architect whom it is thought came to the region as an assistant to the Norwich architect John Johnson, the builder of Clasemont for Sir John Morris (1745-1819). Three very decent Georgian terraces of the mid / late 1820's by Jernegan can still be seen in Swansea's Maritime Quarter Conservation Area. They are Somerset Place, Gloucester Place and perhaps the best at Cambrian Place.

Somerset Place

The first-named is an imaginative exercise in how to take an unremarkable short terrace with a slight splay in it and make it look interesting. It is comprised of six bays of housing each of which Jernegan treats differently. From bay to bay he varied the number of window openings, the size (he even employed blind windows) and the size and shape of the relieving arch used as the unifying device for each element. He really did put himself to some trouble to make this humble stretch of terrace look diverting and contribute to the townscape. All but the last bay of Somerset Place has been rendered, although in reality the building as a whole probably was not. That end bay (No. 6) gives you some idea of what it must have looked like back in the 1820's.

Gloucester Place

Gloucester Place is by far the plainest of the three but none the less enjoyable for that. It is a simple straight terrace without a trace of ornament, unaffected and a typical plain piece of late-Georgian building. It nevertheless has a dignity and quiet distinctiveness that is only enhanced by the 'background noise' of the surrounding Victorian and Edwardian buildings. It still has lessons to teach us to do with how a simply designed multiple-occupation dwelling can look. How it can enrich the civic environment without being either a visual mess or an instantly forgettable rectangle of housing units.

Cambrian Place

Cambrian Place is the prettiest fragment of them all and we can tell from surviving paintings and engravings that it was once comprised of two unequal wings of townhouses flanking an Assembly Room finished in 1821, also by Jernegan. Unfortunately only the façade of the latter now survives, the rest was demolished having fallen into unrepairable dereliction. Behind an austere Georgian façade it has inevitably been resurrected as modern apartments. The other shorter wing disappeared at some point in the 19th century. The remaining wing is still well worth seeing and is (I think) the prettiest sequence of housing in Swansea. To look at Jernegan's elevation to Cambrian Place is to enjoy the simplest of architectural experiences, the interplay of solid-to-void relationships. True, there are Soanic echoes in the incised stonework and the unexpected frivolity of the copper canopies. But what the eye really enjoys are the rhythms set up by expanses of brickwork and window openings of varying sizes. It's the simplest 'trick' in the architect's repertoire but in skilled hands can often be the most effective. It combines to make Cambrian Place (for me) the most elegant piece of architecture in Swansea. And one made from nothing more exotic than some lovely golden Georgian brick and the varying size and position of the window openings. Jernegan's asymmetric elevation to Cambrian Place is an object lesson to anyone involved in architecture who thinks that 'visual interest' resides in wacky shapes or technology.

Richard Porch

This article was first published in About Wales, the magazine for the Civic Trust for Wales.