Next time you are stuck in traffic as you approach the centre of Swansea on Fabian Way take a second to look around. Not so long ago you would have been on a bustling street filled with shops, pubs and pedestrians. Fabian Street as it was called was the high street of the Eastside, a busy street at the heart of the community. This dramatic change is one example of the transformations the area has undergone over the last 150 years - and it is a history that the author of a new book says is often overlooked when the story of Swansea is told.
Until the middle of the 19th Century most of the land on the east bank of the River Tawe - Foxhole, St Thomas, Danygraig, and Port Tennant - was open farmland. But change was on the way, and the latter half of the 1800s would see the area develop into an industrial powerhouse that was home not only to a range of factories and works but also to the town's main docks and three of its seven major railway stations. And with the industry came workers, a diverse group of people drawn from as far afield as Ireland and Belgium who settled in, and fashioned, the Eastside community.
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