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 suburban streets are planted with trees. The Taff is spanned by two bridges, one a four-arched bridge rebuilt in 1858–1859 leading to Llandaff, and the other a cantilever with a central swinging span of 190 ft. 8 in.

In virtue of its being the shire-town, Cardiff acquired in 1535 the right to send one representative to parliament, which it did until 1832, from which date Cowbridge and Llantrisant have been joined with it as contributory boroughs returning one member. The great sessions for the county were during their whole existence from 1542 to 1830 held at Cardiff, but the assizes (which replaced them) have since then been held at Swansea and Cardiff alternately, as also are the quarter sessions for Glamorgan. The borough has a separate commission of the peace, having a stipendiary magistrate since 1858. It was granted a separate court of quarter sessions in 1890, it was constituted a county borough in 1888, and, by letters patent dated the 28th of October 1905, it was created a city and the dignity of lord mayor conferred on its chief magistrate. The corporation consists of ten aldermen and thirty councillors, and the area of the municipal borough is 8408 acres.

Under powers secured in 1884, the town obtains its chief water supply from a gathering ground near the sources of the Taff on the old red sandstone beyond the northern out-crop of the mineral basin and on the southern slopes of the Brecknock Beacons. Here two reservoirs of a combined capacity of 668 million gallons have been constructed, and a conduit some 36 m. long laid to Cardiff at a total cost of about £1,250,000. A third reservoir is authorized. A gas company, first incorporated in 1837, supplies the city as well as Llandaff and Penarth with gas, but the corporation also supplies electric power both for lighting and working the tramways, which were purchased from a private company in 1898. The city owned in 1905 about 290 acres of parks and “open spaces,” the chief being Roath Park of 100 acres (including a botanical garden of 15 acres), Llandaff fields of 70 acres, and Cathays Park of 60 acres, which was acquired in 1900 mainly with the view of placing in it the chief public buildings of the town.

Commerce and Industries.—Edward II.’s charter of 1324 indicates that Cardiff had become even then a trading and shipping centre of some importance. It enjoyed a brief existence as a staple town from 1327 to 1332. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. it was notorious as a resort of pirates, while some of the ironfounders of the district were suspected of secretly supplying Spain with ordnance. It was for centuries a “head port,” its limits extending from Chepstow to Llanelly; in the 18th century it sank to the position of “a creek” of the port of Bristol, but about 1840 it was made independent, its limits for customs’ purposes being defined as from the Rumney estuary to Nash Point, so that technically the “port of Cardiff” includes Barry and Penarth as well as Cardiff proper. Down to the end of the 18th century there was only a primitive quay on the river side for shipping purposes. Coal was brought down from the hills on the backs of mules, and iron carried in two-ton wagons. In 1798 the first dock (12 acres in extent) was constructed at the terminus of the Glamorgan canal from Merthyr. The commercial greatness of Cardiff is due to the vast coal and iron deposits of the country drained by the Taff and Rhymney, between whose outlets the town is situated. But a great impetus to its development was given by the 2nd marquess of Bute, who has often been described as the second founder of Cardiff. In 1830 he obtained the first act for the construction of a dock which (now known as the West Bute dock) was opened in 1839 and measures (with its basin) 19 acres. The opening of the Taff Vale railway in 1840 and of the South Wales railway to Cardiff in 1850 necessitated further accommodation, and the trustees of the marquess (who died in 1848) began in 1851 and opened in 1855 the East Bute dock and basin measuring 46 acres. The Rhymney railway to Cardiff was completed in 1858 and the trade of the port so vastly increased that the shipment of coal and coke went up from 4562 tons in 1839 to 1,796,000 tons in 1860. In 1864 the Bute trustees unsuccessfully sought powers for constructing three additional docks to cost two millions sterling, but under the more limited powers granted in 1866, the Roath basin (12 acres) was opened in 1874, and (under a substituted act of 1882) the Roath dock (33 acres) was opened in 1887. All these docks were constructed by the Bute family at a cost approaching three millions sterling. Still they fell far short of the requirements of the district for in 1865 the Taff Vale Railway Company opened a dock of 26 acres under the headland at Penarth, while in 1884 a group of colliery owners, dissatisfied with their treatment at Cardiff, obtained powers to construct docks at Barry which are now 114 acres in extent. The Bute trustees in 1885 acquired the Glamorgan canal and its dock, and in the following year obtained an act for vesting their various docks and the canal in a company now known as the Cardiff Railway Company. The South Bute dock of 50 acres, authorized in 1894 and capable of accommodating the largest vessels afloat, was opened in 1907, bringing the whole dock area of Cardiff (including timber ponds) to about 210 acres. There are also ten private graving and floating docks and one public graving dock. There is ample equipment of fixed and movable staiths and cranes of various sizes up to 70 tons, the Lewis-Hunter patent cranes being largely used for shipping coal owing to their minimizing the breakage of coal and securing its even distribution. The landing of foreign cattle is permitted by the Board of Trade, and there are cattle lairs and abattoirs near the Cardiff wharf. The total exports of the Cardiff docks in 1906 amounted to 8,767,502 tons, of which 8,433,629 tons were coal, coke and patent fuel, 151,912 were iron and steel and their manufactures, and 181,076 tons of general merchandise. What Cardiff lacks is a corresponding import trade, for its imports in 1906 amounted to only 2,108,133 tons, of which the chief items were iron ore (895,610 tons), pit-wood (303,407), grain and flour (298,197). Taking “the port of Cardiff” in its technical sense as including Barry and Penarth, it is the first port in the kingdom for shipping cleared to foreign countries and British possessions, second in the kingdom for its timber imports, and first in the world for shipment of coal.

The east moors, stretching towards the outlet of the Rhymney river, have become an important metallurgical quarter. Copper works were established here in 1866, followed long after by tin-stamping and enamel works. In 1888 the Dowlais Iron Company (now Messrs Guest, Keen & Nettlefold, Ltd.) acquired here some ninety acres on which were built four blast furnaces and six Siemens’ smelting furnaces. There are also in the city several large grain mills and breweries, a biscuit factory, wire and hemp roperies, fuel works, general foundries and engineering works. At Ely, 3 m. out of Cardiff, there are also breweries, a small tin works and large paper works. The newspapers of Cardiff include two weeklies, the Cardiff Times and Weekly Mail, founded in 1857 and 1870 respectively, two morning dailies, the South Wales Daily News and Western Mail, established in 1872 and 1869 respectively, and two evening dailies.

History and Historic Buildings.—In documents of the first half of the 12th century the name is variously spelt as Kairdif, Cairti and Kardid. The Welsh form of the name, Caerdydd (pronounced Caerdeeth, with the accent on the second syllable) suggests that the name means “the fort of (Aulus?) Didius,” rather than Caer Dâf (“the fortress on the Taff”), which is nowhere found (except in Leland), though Caer Dyv once existed as a variant. No traces have been found of any pre-Roman settlement at Cardiff. Excavations carried out by the marquess of Bute from 1889 onward furnished for the first time conclusive proof that Cardiff had been a Roman station, and also revealed the sequence of changes which it had subsequently undergone. There was first, on the site occupied by the present castle, a camp of about ten acres, probably constructed after the conquest of the Silures 75–77, so as to command the passage of the Taff, which was here crossed by the Via Maritima running from Gloucester to St David’s. In later Roman times there were added a series of polygonal bastions, of the type found at Caerwent. To this period also belongs the massive rampart, over 10 ft. thick, and the north gateway, one of the most perfect Roman gateways in Great Britain. After the departure of the Romans the walls became ruinous or were partly pulled down,