CHRISTMAS was only a couple of days away when it came to life. With a festive atmosphere abounding, it may seem a strange time to form a new organisation.

But the Gower Society has always ploughed its own furrow and on December 23, 1947, it was doing that from the off.

The setting was a large house in the Uplands district of Swansea and the home of Ernest Morgan, who had just retired from a very long and distinguished career as the town's borough architect.

In violet ink, in the hand of David Bernard Rees, the occasion was put on record in a small, brown book, the Gower Society — Minute Book.

It was decided to convert the group of researchers, formerly known as the Gowermen, into a public society.

A letter was drawn up inviting interested people to an inauguration lecture on Gower, to be held on Swansea Museum on January 7.

Now, those first 60 years have been recalled in a special Gower Society publication.

It had been during the spring of 1946 that Mr Rees, who became the organisation's first field officer and assistant secretary, and Gwent Jones, its first secretary, met up to discuss the former's desire to carry out some fieldwork. Soon, they began to talk of starting some antiquarian society to explore Gower. Jim Rees, a teacher not long down from Oxford and who was researching Gower history, linked up with them.

"Then, late one evening, sitting in Gwent's car on Gower Road, the three of them decided to form themselves into the Gower Society and to approach Ernest Morgan to be chairman," according to society records.

At his house, two days before Christmas, the four formed the Gower Society and paid an agreed subscription. They held their first outdoor meeting on New Year's Day, with a trip to Llanrhidian "for the purpose of locating certain stones". Three days later, they were on the road again, in dismal rain, to explore the church site at Llanelan and Cil Ifor, the largest Iron Age fort in Gower.

The first public meeting followed on January 7, a date many regard as the real birth of the society. Encouragingly, it attracted a capacity audience. The body was up and running.

Others joined the committee, and early on Ernest Morgan produced a drawing for a badge, a portcullis — part of the coat of arms of the Beauforts, lords of Gower and of Swansea Borough — representing "protection" and coloured blue and gold to represent sea and sand.

The new society saw itself very much as a daughter society of the Royal Institution of South Wales (Swansea Museum), the learned body with a history going back to the 1830s.

It was not long, though, until the society began to earn its corn, so to speak.

"The fateful role of protector of Gower and organiser of public opinion was, however, thrust upon the society quite suddenly and unexpectedly by the Rhossili Bay holiday camp scare of July 1948," the minute book said.

That was a reference to a proposal by Billy Butlin to flatten the dunes at Hillend, Llangennith, to build a giant holiday camp. Horrified members of the newly formed group immediately launched a massive campaign to stop the plan in its tracks. They were successful, and the Butlins attraction was never built.

The events leading up to the victory are described in the new book, The Gower Society — The First Sixty Years.

"The minutes give a good idea of the spirit of the meeting, which developed spontaneously, but rather incongruously in Rhossili Church on the third of July 1948," it said. "Ernest Morgan made a water-colour drawing of what Rhossili Bay would look like if these 'absurd proposals' were carried out.

"When he produced the picture he called it 'The proposed vulgarisation of Rhossili Bay as seen by from Bessie's Meadow'. The effect on the society was electric. Public meetings were held in Swansea and Rhossili, private meetings were held in important places and within three months the scheme was withdrawn.

"We were made. At one leap, the Gower Society had become the biggest public amenity society in Wales. The Rhossili Bay affair brought in 200 new members and gave the society both a new role and a new heart.

"Asked in a television interview whether he would ever try to establish one of his holiday camps in Gower, Billy Butlin answered: 'It'd be too hot for me down there.' And he wasn't talking about the weather."