Oystermouth Local Board of Health plan, 1876.

Scope and Content

Plan of Oystermouth Local Board of Health, surveyed and drawn in 1876. Although of a similar date to the first edition of the Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map, this is an original survey and is drawn using conventions that appear on other local board of health maps from the 1850s onwards. Like Samuel Gant's 1852 map of Swansea local Board of Health (reference TC 67/6/1-4), its scale is 1:528 (44 feet to an inch) and it gives a detailed representation of the houses, gardens, flights of steps, sheds, roads, quarries, fields and pathways. Toilets are indicated by a block with a spot in the middle. There are pencil annotations showing some of the streets built after the completion of the map, and sewers are marked on. Many of the house numbers are also marked in pencil. The sheets do not sit neatly next to one another, but overlap to varying degrees and are drawn at different orientations, with south, south west, west, north west or north at the top of the sheet. They cover the built up part of the area served by the local board, including the villages of Newton, Norton and Mumbles and the Thistleboon and Langland areas. The original numbering of the sheets has been preserved in the sub-numbering of the maps. No. 14, covering the area including Langland Corner is missing. The surveyor was P. W. Olwill, whose appointment appears in the minutes of Oystermouth Local Board. (Patrick William Olwill, born in Ireland, c. 1820-21; working in Neath by 1851 where he was married; moved to Swansea by 1861, where he died in 1898 aged 78; buried in Danygraig Cemetery). The task of surveying was put out to tender towards the end of 1875 and Olwill's tender of £270 was accepted, subject to the condition that the survey be completed within 9 months, with a £50 penalty clause. Olwill was granted a 6-week extension due to illness on 21 Dec. 1876 and the final salary payment was made on 1 Jan. 1877. No mention is made in the minutes of the completion of the contract.

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