Guide to The Cambrian index online

This guide covers the background to the project, advanced search techniques, how to combine your search with the Welsh newspaper online database and other ways of finding copies of articles.

An introduction to the Cambrian Newspaper and the Cambrian Index

What is The Cambrian?

On 28 January 1804, the first newspaper to be published in Wales, The Cambrian, rolled off the press at its premises in Wind Street, Swansea. It carried local and national news, advertisements, notices and social discourse for 126 years, its final weekly issue appearing in March 1930 when it merged with other newspapers to become the new Herald of Wales.

Wind Street, Swansea, where The Cambrian offices were located

What is the Cambrian Indexing Project?

The Cambrian Indexing Project was established at Swansea Central Library with the aim of providing researchers with speedy access to the wealth of information contained within the newspaper's pages. Created thanks to the dedicated work of a team of volunteers, the digitised index, which launched online in 2005, has been used by people from all over the world and has been an important finding aid for those researching the history of South Wales, family historians and students.

The index now contains around 750,000 entries. These entries relate to people connected with and events occurring in an area roughly represented by the former county of West Glamorgan and its principal centres of population of Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot. This means the index is not useful for national news, except where it has had local impact. This policy does not apply to the newspaper's reported birth, marriage and death columns which have all been extracted and indexed, regardless of location.

The period covered comprehensively by the index database currently is from January 1804 (when the newspaper started) to 1884 and new entries are being added constantly. Manual extraction and input of a year's newspaper articles by our skilled volunteers takes a long time, so the years covered will take some time to increase. You will find some news articles indexed from The Cambrian and other papers for later periods, but these have not been added systematically. Birth, marriage and death entries have been comprehensively indexed up to 1914, with some later entries from the 1920s and 1930s.

Articles are indexed by topic and arranged in main groupings of: Transport; Ships and Shipping; Disasters and Accidents; Planning and Land Management; Buildings; Agriculture; Industry; Education; Health and Welfare; Religion; Politics; Crime; Culture and the Arts; Sport and Recreation; and Uniformed Forces. You can use a search option to search under these subject headings.

Other newspapers

The overwhelming majority of index entries which have been extracted come from The Cambrian. However, to provide continuity and improve access to other local newspapers, the extraction of birth, marriage and death entries has been systematically continued into The South Wales Daily Post, an important daily newspaper founded in Swansea in 1893, which continues today as The South Wales Evening Post. The South Wales Daily Post took over in popularity from The Cambrian.

The index also contains several thousand entries appertaining to people and events in the Swansea, Gower, Neath and Port Talbot areas that have been extracted from The Western Mail, now Wales's national newspaper. These entries relate to a number of articles from around the turn of the twentieth century and have been incorporated into the Cambrian Index database as a limited finding aid. Bear in mind some of these entries come from the Swansea edition of The Western Mail so you may not find them in microfilm or online versions of the Western Mail. In which case please check a Swansea paper of the same date and you should find a similar article.

How to use the Cambrian Index online

The Cambrian Index database can be searched for any word, most often a personal or place name.

It can also be used to identify types of events or reports of occurrences, for example mining accidents, bankruptcies, meetings of societies, opening of buildings, crime reports etc.

Here are some tips on searching:

The "Search Text " box requires an entry in every case. Insert here the surname / place name / topic that you require.

In the case of a surname search, you may wish to also enter a first name of the individual, in order to narrow the search results. Bear in mind, however, that both first names and surnames may have several permutations of spelling, quite common in the nineteenth century, and each will need to be searched to be sure of getting the greatest number of accurate hits, for example Rees / Rhys / Reece as a first name, coupled with the surname Bevan or Beavan!

First names may also appear in the index in an abbreviated form or, indeed, simply as an initial. The following are the most common, but not exclusive, abbreviations:
Edward - Edw., Elizabeth - Eliz., John - Jno., Thomas - Thos., William - Wm. or Willie

Place names are also not consistent in their spelling. This reflects the variety of spellings that appear within the newspaper, faithfully copied into the database by project staff. Examples are:
Hafod and Havod, (L)langyfelach, (L)langafelach, (L)langyvelach, (L)langavelach and many other permutations, Briton Ferry, Britonferry, Briton-Ferry, Yystradgynlais, Ystradgunlais

In other words, if at first you fail to find an entry, try a different spelling!
Exact phrase - as it suggests, this will return results precisely as the search is input, including punctuation, for example Eliz. Jones, Edw. Thomas.
All words - this can be used where a combination of words will provide the best results, for example Williams Neath (avoids the proliferation of entries inevitably found for a common name such as Williams and, possibly, useful where a location for a family is known). The words will appear in the same entry, but not necessarily together.
Any words - using this will identify entries for 2 or more different search words, in separate index entries unless, co-incidentally, the words searched appear in the same entry anyway. This can be used for differing spellings of the same word, for example various spellings of Llangyfelach.
"From Index" box - subject headings - when searching for a particular type of event, particularly where you may wish to see the results in a chronological list, for example a list of railway accidents, reports of types of crimes or a list of entries appertaining to horse racing, it is necessary to use the drop-down "From Index" box. The list provides broad subject headings from which to choose. Choose a topic from the list, then insert in the "Search Text" box the type of event.

The examples mentioned here will, without limiting the dates, return several hundred entries using the combination of "Disasters and Accidents" with the word "railway", as will a combination of "Sports and Recreation" with the words "horse racing". Inserting dates will obviously influence the number of entries found. Using this search method, it is advisable to use both the singular and plural of the word to be searched, for example library and libraries, theatre and theatres in the "Search Text" box.
Date range - please use the format dd/mm/yyyy, for instance 06/08/1864 will search 6 August 1864 onwards. Comprehensive birth, marriage and death entries (including those extracted from The South Wales Daily Post) extend from 1804 to 1914. By 2021, the detailed indexing of articles in The Cambrian extended from 1804 to 1883 though there are a number of later entries which should be treated as "bonuses".

Search results

As you can see from these example results above the index entries provide a brief precis of the original newspaper article, including the most important information, such as name and subject matter. Other headings give the date the article appeared and the newspaper it appeared in. The code listing for the Catalogue Index, such as C40, is used for administrative purposes. It corresponds to the Index Description used for organising entries under subjects.

You may find the same article more than once in the index as it may have been indexed under multiple index descriptions.

Some index entries have the newspaper page number on which the article can be found which may appear at either the beginning or the end of the entry. The page number is not usually included in birth, marriage and death Index entries as these announcements mostly appear on the last page of the newspaper.

Using your results

The digitised version of The Cambrian in Welsh Newspapers Online

The Cambrian has been digitised as part of the National Library of Wales's major project Welsh Newspapers Online (opens new window) which is free for anyone to use. This digitised version provides a full online reproduction of the newspaper along with a search facility based on optical character recognition.

The newspaper was digitised from the National Library's collection of The Cambrian and it covers primarily the period 1804-1846, 1870-1910. Some individual newspaper issues from within this time frame are also missing from Welsh Newspapers Online.

You can use The Cambrian Index to find an entry and then either browse by date or use the search feature to get to the relevant article on Welsh Newspapers Online. There are some important differences to bear in mind between the two resources:

As the optical character recognition used in the digitisation is not perfect you may find a search on Welsh Newspapers Online may miss something correctly transcribed by our volunteer indexers from The Cambrian Index online and vice versa. Test searches comparing results between the two resources have found a number of discrepancies in the search results for Welsh Newspapers Online compared with results from the index.
Remember subject headings were also used in creating The Cambrian Index which gives an additional way to search.
The digitised version covers the text from the entire paper whereas The Cambrian Index focuses on articles relating to Swansea and Gower.
It is also important to remember that The Cambrian Index online covers the substantial 23 year period from 1847-1869 which is not included at all in Welsh Newspapers Online. Our collection of Cambrian microfilms in Central Library covers many of the gaps which exist in the digitised version and we can provide copies from these films for customers (see below for details).

Microfilm at Central Library

The original newspapers can be seen on microfilm at Central Library and you can create a digital or printed copy from them. Booking of a reader / printer is always advisable by ringing 01792 636464.

A guide to local and Welsh newspapers and microfilm in Central Library A guide to local and Welsh newspapers and microfilm in Central Library

Other repositories holding The Cambrian

It is advisable to contact all repositories before visiting for confirmation of access to newspapers or microfilm, opening times, booking of reader / printers, details of charges etc.

Files of The Cambrian, The South Wales Daily Post and The Western Mail are also held at:

The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.
- News media (British Library) (opens new window)
The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 3BU.
- The National Library of Wales (opens new window)

Microfilm of The Cambrian (to 1893):

West Glamorgan Archive Service, Civic Centre, Oystermouth Road, Swansea SA1 3SN.
- West Glamorgan Archive Service
Neath Reference Library, Victoria Gardens, Neath SA11 3BA.
- email: neath.library@neath-porttalbot.gov.uk

For customers who are unable to visit Central Library or other repositories themselves, Swansea library staff will carry out limited orders, supplying either digital copies by email or printed photocopies by post (up to 20 copies).

Please identify the entries you would like photocopied and email us at cambrian.index@swansea.gov.uk with the details or to request any further information. Please also tell us your full postal address so that we can calculate the correct charge for postage for hardcopies. We will let you know the overall cost and how to proceed. It is worth bearing in mind that a single lengthy newspaper article can generate several photocopies. Enquiries will be dealt with in strict chronological order of receipt.

If you have any other questions not covered by this guide, please email us on cambrian.index@swansea.gov.uk.