The town includes the site of the Roman fort of
Leucarum, occupied by Roman Auxiliary soldiers from AD73 to around 320. In 1106 much of South Wales was assigned to an Anglo-Norman lord,
Henry de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Warwick, and as part of a castle-building programme he built
Loughor Castle, as an earthwork with timber defenses, built into the south-east corner of the Roman ramparts. Over a turbulent 250 years or so the castle was progressively upgraded with stone buildings and curtain walls. The castle later fell into ruin and is now a scheduled monument in the care of
Cadw. Meanwhile, Loughor developed around the castle. A medieval Church was established, also within the Roman fort. Rebuilt on the medieval foundations in 1885, St Michael's Church was deconsecrated in 2021. Loughor later grew as a
port, although competition from the larger and better-connected ports at
Llanelli and
Burry Port, meant that Loughor was always a small-scale maritime town. Its position alongside the narrowing of the Loughor Estuary meant it was an important river crossing, originally as a ford at low tide and a ferry when the tide was in. A wooden swing-bridge was built in 1833, when river traffic still used the estuary. The arrival of the Railway in 1852 required the building of
Loughor Viaduct, built from wooden trestles by
Brunel, also originally featuring a swing-section. The viaduct was replaced by a steel and concrete structure in 2013. A new road bridge of 1923 acknowledged the river was now closed to shipping, and this itself was replaced by the new A484
Loughor bridge in 1988. Loughor Estuary and
Burry Inlet, with vast areas of sandbanks and some of the highest tidal ranges in the world, has always had its share of risks. The town has had its own lifeboat station since 1969, situated near the road bridge. The current lifeboat is a Ribcraft 5.85m RIB. In the early 20th century the main industries were large
tin and
steel works, situated on both banks of the estuary. About 1800,
John Vivian (1750–1826) of
Truro,
Cornwall, joined the Cheadle Brasswire Company as managing partner in the copper works at Loughor and
Penclawdd. His family would go on to be key industrialists across the Swansea area, running copper-mining, copper-smelting and trading businesses, as
Vivian & Sons, throughout the 19th century. At Ysbytty, on the other side of the river, the Spitty copper works of the early 19th century was succeeded by a major iron and tin-plate works which continued into the 1950s. This employed large numbers of both men and women from Loughor, who would cross the estuary each day to get to work. ==Structure and amenities==