The dock was a longitudinal quay-wall, not an enclosed basin, for the 'landing of limestone and shipping of coal'. By 1717 building materials for the new Llangyfelach Copperworks were coming up this wharf. Judging by the wharf's nineteenth-century name of 'Copper House Wharf', it must have become a trans-shipment point for copper and copper-ore. The medieval collieries under the adjacent crag of Craig Trewyddfa may have shipped their coal from a quay here and by 1768 the southern half of the wharf was again a coal bank, probably served by a railway by 1770. The wharfage was probably in disrepair by 1876 (see Hughes, 'Copperopolis', p. 302).