CARDIFF AND THE MARQUESSES OF BUTE John
Davies
pp xii335 inc. 6 illustrations 1980
The Bute estate, held by the family from 1766 to
1947, was of central importance in the social, political and
cultural life of Glamorgan. Even more significant, both to the
history of Wales and to the history of aristocratic participation in
economic development was the family's crucial contribution to
the rise of the port of Cardiff, and to the growth of the south
Wales iron and coal trade. The book contains chapters on the family,
the estate and its administration, the estate and the local
community, the agricultural estate, the urban estate, the mineral
estate and on Bute involvement in docks and railways.
`...careful research is presented with extraordinary
lucidity...Apart from its Welsh interest, this book will be highly
instructive to anyone concerned with the role of landowners in
pioneering industrial development. It will also engage the attention
of urban historians, since nowhere in Britain was the growth of a
city more decisively shaped by one landed family than in the
case of Cardiff and the Butes. As a local study with a wide general
appeal, this is a model of its kind...'(Spectator)
`Highly readable and entertaining...'(Anglo-Welsh
Review) `...a major study, based on massive research and
formidable erudition...By any standard, this is the most
important case study in British landownership to appear...'
(Welsh History Review) `All this and more is
illustrated in the large and scattered archive of estate records
which John Davies handles with such insight and clarity in this
fine book...'(History) 0-7083-0761-2