| Article Index |
|---|
| Mumbles |
| Roman Times |
| All Pages |
Mumbles (otherwise, The Mumbles – Welsh Y Mwmbwls) is a large village with adjacent headland stretching into Swansea Bay.
It is part of the administrative area of the City and County of Swansea in Wales. Historically the area was part of the county of Glamorgan. Mumbles is also the name of a community made up of the Mayals, Newton, Oystermouth and West Cross electoral wards and has an elected community council.
The name Mumbles is possibly derived from the French word mamelles, meaning "breasts", which the two islets at the end of the Mumbles headland resemble. On the furthest islet stands Mumbles Lighthouse. Situated in the village is the ruin of Oystermouth Castle.
History
Archaeological evidence indicates that an ancient forest was located on what is now the foreshore of Mumbles Bay. The bones of bears, wolves, hyenas, deer, rhinoceros and mammoth have been discovered there. A bone cave at the Western tip of Caswell Bay was excavated in 1832, but has since been destroyed by the sea. Another, at the Inner Sound, Mumbles Head was blown up by quarrymen in 1838 but not before elephant bones had been found. Also scattered around the bays of Mumbles and Gower are the bones of 16 Ice Age mammals, including a mammoth's tooth measuring 10 centimetres across, which is on display in Swansea Museum. The first human crop growers arrived in Mumbles over 3,000 years ago. Swansea Museum has two well finished flint axe heads, one from Newton and one from an allotment on Mumbles Hill. Much of what we know about the first metalworkers, in the Bronze Age, has been learned from their tombs: Pieces of pottery, a cairn and remains of a hut were found. The Bronze and Iron Ages seem to have been comparatively warlike and, on the cliffs above the Redcliffe flats at Caswell Bay, are the ridged remnants of a Redley Cliff iron-age fort.