Penllergaer is situated about 6 miles north of Swansea, in southern Wales. Pronunciation is awkward for the non-Welsh speaker... try pen-clu-gare - the last two syllables rhyme with the and stare.

Penllergaer has two roundabouts, one of which has the M4 Junction 47 services. It has one pub, which does meals, and a Working Mens' Club which probably doesn't. However, it has lots of grass in the form of two sports fields (well one official and one unofficial sports field).

It has industrial sites at both ends, although the postal addresses for one of them indicates that it belongs to neighbouring Gorseinon. There is an RSPCA¹ headquarters which occasionally gets a lot of flak about the way it is run.

To the east, on the site of the former council offices, is a restored astronomical observatory dating from 1851. More about this can be found at The Penllergaer Observatory. This was a present from John Dillwyn Llewellyn to his daughter in 1851, but one must question his motives, as he was a very keen astronomer himself. He was also a pioneer in the field of photography, and worked with Fox Talbot in developing some of the earliest known photographic techniques.