In this article, the town of Swansea is suggested as an exemplar of pre-nineteenth-century Welsh industrial and urban development. Small in comparison with English towns, Swansea in 1801 had nevertheless risen up the Welsh urban rank-order to stand second only, in terms of population, to the industrial boomtown Merthyr Tydfil. Contemporary descriptions of Swansea as ‘Copperopolis’, ‘the Metropolis of Wales’, ‘the Mecca of Nonconformity’ and ‘the Brighton [or Naples] of Wales’ reflect the range of its functions at this time, and the high regard in which the town was held, both by its inhabitants and by visitors. Such a town inevitably attracted settlers and this article also examines eighteenth-century population change, the scale of immigration and the provenance of the settlers, and attempts to link the influx with the physical development of the town.