White Rock was the third oldest of the Swansea copperworks, established in 1737 by a partnership from Bristol at a time when copper smelting was switching from blast-furnace to reverbatory furnace technology.

The works closed in 1924 and the site was almost completely cleared in the 1960s. Nonetheless, it is the only early eighteenth century copperworks site in Swansea to retain substantial, and buried, remains. Now an area of open land on the eastern bank of the lower River Tawe, designated as the White Rock Industrial Archaeology park in the 1980s, remains include a cut-and-cover canal tunnel (NPRN 85093) of 1783-85, the remnants of the much-altered 'Great Workhouse' of 1736 on the western side and a re-excavated seventeenth century river dock flanked on the north by a series of stone-built quays, with decks made of cast blocks of copper slag, built in the nineteenth century.

The early White Rock quay has collapsed and been removed. In 1870-71 lead and silver smelting were introduced, and this resulted in the building of a brick condensing flue up the side of Kilvey Hill and an inclined railway to remove the spoil. Part of the latter was supported by a stone arch that also housed two flues and a chimney, and this still survives.

Sources:
A Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of the Swansea Region", Association for Industrial Archaeology, 2nd Edition, 1989
Site entry by Stephen Hughes for Buildings of Glamorgan, John Newman, 1995

RCAHMW, 10 March 2009.