Vivian & Sons

Vivian & Sons was a British metallurgical and chemicals business based at Hafod, in the lower Swansea valley. The firm was founded in 1810, disappearing as a separate entity in 1924. Its chief outputs were ingot and sheet copper, with sulphuric acid and artificial manures as by-products.

About 1800, the Cornishman John Vivian (1750–1826), the first of the Vivian family to settle in Swansea, became managing partner in the copper works at Penclawdd and Loughor owned by the Cheadle Brasswire Company of Staffordshire. By 1806 his second son, John Henry Vivian was made manager at Penclawdd. In 1808-10, land at the Hafod was leased from the Duke of Beaufort and the Earl of Jersey, by the new firm of Vivian & Sons. The partners were John Vivian and his two elder sons, John Henry Vivian and Richard Hussey Vivian. Richard was the older but was fully occupied in his military career; it was John Henry who became managing partner.

It was upon this site that the Hafod Smelting Works and Mills were established. Wood in his Rivers of Wales (1813) refers to the works “…lately built by Messrs. Vivian & Co., in the construction of which a laudable attention has been paid to the comfort and convenience of the workmen by a different arrangement of the furnaces.”

By the 1840s, the Hafod Works were the largest of their kind in the world, and their output represented one-quarter of the entire copper trade of the United Kingdom. During the last decade of John Henry's life, 1845–1855, his eldest son, Henry Hussey Vivian, managed the Works and took full control of the business on his father’s death. In 1853, Vivian jointly acquired, with Williams, Foster & Co. of Morfa, the White Rock Copper Works at Foxhole, leased from the Earl of Jersey. In 1864, he began to obtain sulphuric acid from copper smoke and in 1870-71 he converted part of the White Rock works to treat poor silver-lead ores. White Rock ceased operations in 1928, the lease was surrendered and the works dismantled.

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