Neath Abbey was founded by the knight Sir Richard de Grenville in 1130, and by the 13th century was one of Wales’s wealthiest abbeys. It didn’t escape the Industrial Revolution however; by the 1730s the abbey had become a copper smelting plant with furnaces, workshops and workers’ dwellings. The industrial debris was cleared away in the early 20th century and its ruins are still considered one of the most impressive monastic remains in South East Wales.