The South Wales Coalfield reaches the coast in this region, and coal was being exported by the year 1550, along with great quantities of limestone, quarried in the Mumbles area and on Gower and in high demand as fertiliser. Swansea was already a significant port, and although it was small (perhaps 1000 people in 1560), it had one of the earliest town charters granted in Wales and a constant influx of migrants from the Welsh countryside: this influx occasioned a protest from the borough of Swansea in 1603 (Davies, p267).