My portfolio will compare and contrast Cardiff, the capital city of Wales since 1905 and Haverfordwest, the county town of Pembrokeshire in rural West Wales. There is a huge difference between the modern day development of Cardiff and Haverfordwest, yet both of them have very similar reasons for their developments. My essay will be mainly based on the development of Cardiff and how it became such a popular area for people to settle and for industries such as coal mining and steel works to take place. However I will be talking a little bit about my other chosen settlement Haverfordwest and how that also grew as a small town to this day where their population has also increased by a very large amount.
The origins of the word Cardiff provide a clue to where the settlement first began. The Welsh pronunciation for Cardiff is Caerdydd which means fort or castle. Historians believe it should have been Caerteft, which translates to the fort or castle by the Taf, which is the river that runs through the city centre. Cardiff’s castle is on the banks of the River Taf, which…show more content… During 1840's the town of Cardiff was undergoing rapid development. This was at the time of the famines in Ireland when many thousands of people had to flee their native land to avoid starvation and destitution. The docks in Cardiff were being developed by the Marquis of Bute with the main purpose of providing a port for the export of the coal produced in the mines of the South Wales valleys. To provide the necessary labour for the building of the docks the Marquis of Bute made arrangements to bring a large number of Irish families to Cardiff. He settled them in purpose built housing in an area near the docks. This area was known as Newtown. A number of docks had been built between 1839-1887. The first dock built became known as Bute West Dock. Another three docks had been built by