Location | |
---|---|
Location in Gwynedd | |
Location | Near Nantlle |
County | Carnarvonshire (now Gwynedd) |
Country | Wales, UK |
Coordinates | 53°3′41″N4°14′19″W / 53.06139°N 4.23861°W SH 500 539 |
Production | |
Products | Slate |
Type | Quarry |
History | |
Opened | 12th century |
Closed | 1956 |
Cilgwyn quarry is a slate quarry located on the north edge of the Nantlle Valley, in North Wales. It is one of the earliest slate quarries in Great Britain, having been worked as early as the 12th century. [1] [2] King Edward I of England was reputed to have stayed in a house roofed by Cilgwyn slates during his conquest of Wales. [3] It is one of the major slate quarries in the Nantlle Valley area.
Quarrying at Cilgwyn dates back to the 12th century. [4] By the end of the 18th century a large number of small pits had grown into a substantial working. [5]
The Cilgwyn Quarry Company was formed in 1800 by the Caernarfon solicitor John Evans. By the 1820s it had been taken over by the Cilgwyn and Cefn Du Slate Company, though this company collapsed in 1831. It was then taken over by George Alfred Muskett, a banker from St Albans who served as MP for that city from 1837 to 1841. Muskett's tenure was not successful, and by 1840 the quarry was failing. Many of the quarrymen went unpaid and they resorted to selling slates directly instead of through the company. Muskett fled the country in 1842, leaving behind debts of £10,000 (equivalent to £1,071,932in 2016); he died in exile a year later. [6]
Quarrying later resumed at Cilgwyn but it failed again between 1843 and 1844, closing with debts of around £20,000. Cilgwyn was operating again by the 1850s and developed four main pits. In 1882, 7,430 tons of finished slate were produced. [5] Between 1864 and 1895 between 200 and 304 workers were employed at Cilgwyn; this had dropped to 51 to 102 between 1918 and 1937. Quarrying continued at Cilgwyn until 1956. [1]
In the early 2000s, the quarry was used as a waste dump by the local council, but landfill activity ceased in January 2009. [7]
Cilgwyn was an opencast quarry comprising three main pits: Gloddfa Glitiau to the north-east, Old Cilgwyn to the west and Veingoch to the south-east. Earlier in its history there were a larger number of smaller pits. [5] The mills stood on top of significant waste tips to the south and east of the pits. A tramway north ran from the mills to another waste-tipping site to the north of the quarry at Bryn Hyfryd Terrace.
Cilgwyn quarry was connected to the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge Nantlle Railway by a pair of inclines that dropped from the Cilgwyn mill level through Gallt-y-fedw quarry to a junction at Talysarn Uchaf. Internally the quarry had an extensive network of 2 ft (610 mm) gauge tramways. These served the three main pits and the waste tips. A mile-long tramway ran from the mills round a horseshoe curve to a waste tip on the north side of Mynydd y Cilgwyn. [8] In 1923 a connection was made from this tramway to the line connecting Fron quarry to Bryngwyn. This allowed slates to be dispatched from Cilgwyn onto the Welsh Highland Railway, avoiding the need to transship slates from the internal quarry wagons into the Nantlle Railway's wagons. [9]
The quarry used at least three steam locomotives internally from 1876: [5] Queenie, a Bagnall; Lilla, a large quarry Hunslet and Jubilee 1897, built by Manning Wardle. Lilia and Jubilee 1897 were sold in 1928 for use on the Penrhyn Quarry Railway and both survived into preservation – Lilla on the Ffestiniog Railway and Jubilee 1897 at the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum. [10] The steam locomotives were replaced with a number of diesels. One of these – Ruston & Hornsby works number 175414 of 1936 – survives in preservation at the National Slate Museum in Llanberis where it carries the name Cilgwyn; it worked at Cilgwyn quarry between 1936 and 1940. [11]
The quarry ceased to send slate via the Welsh Highland Railway in 1935 when a new road was constructed down to Talysarn. From that point all slate left the quarry by road. [12]
Blaenau Ffestiniog is a town in Gwynedd, Wales. Once a slate mining centre in historic Merionethshire, it now relies much on tourists, drawn for instance to the Ffestiniog Railway and Llechwedd Slate Caverns. It reached a population of 12,000 at the peak development of the slate industry, but fell with the decline in demand for slate. The population of the community, including the nearby village Llan Ffestiniog, was 4,875 at the 2011 census: the fourth most populous in Gwynedd after Bangor, Caernarfon and Llandeiniolen. The population not including Llan is now only about 4,000.
The Narrow Gauge Railway Museum is a purpose-built museum dedicated to narrow-gauge railways situated at the Tywyn Wharf station of the Talyllyn Railway in Tywyn, Gwynedd, Wales.
Slate wagons are specialized types of railway wagons designed for the conveyance of slate. The characteristics of this stone led to the development of small open cars that carried the slate in its various forms. These were first developed on the narrow gauge railways serving the slate industry of North Wales in the late 18th century. They were initially used on horse-drawn tramways, but survived with only minor modifications into the days of locomotives and are still to be found in use in the 21st century.
The Nantlle Valley is an area in Gwynedd, North Wales, characterised by its numerous small settlements.
The Croesor Tramway was a Welsh, 2 ft narrow gauge railway line built to carry slate from the Croesor slate mines to Porthmadog. It was built in 1864 without an Act of Parliament and was operated using horse power.
The Nantlle Railway was a Welsh narrow gauge railway. It was built to carry slate from several slate quarries across the Nantlle Valley to the harbour at Caernarfon for export by sea. The line provided a passenger service between Caernarfon and Talysarn from 1856 to 1865. It was the first public railway to be operated in North Wales.
The existence of a slate industry in Wales is attested since the Roman period, when slate was used to roof the fort at Segontium, now Caernarfon. The slate industry grew slowly until the early 18th century, then rapidly during the Industrial Revolution in Wales until the late 19th century, at which time the most important slate producing areas were in northwest Wales. These sites included the Penrhyn Quarry near Bethesda, the Dinorwic Quarry near Llanberis, the Nantlle Valley quarries, and Blaenau Ffestiniog, where the slate was mined rather than quarried. Penrhyn and Dinorwig were the two largest slate quarries in the world, and the Oakeley mine at Blaenau Ffestiniog was the largest slate mine in the world. Slate is mainly used for roofing, but is also produced as thicker slab for a variety of uses including flooring, worktops and headstones.
The Gorseddau Tramway was a 3 ft narrow gauge railway built in Wales in 1856 to link the slate quarries around Gorseddau with the wharves at Porthmadog. It was an early forerunner of the Gorseddau Junction and Portmadoc Railway and subsequently the Welsh Highland Railway.
The Gorseddau Junction and Portmadoc Railway (GJ&PR) was a Welsh tramway.
The Rhiwbach Tramway was a Welsh industrial, 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in narrow gauge railway connecting the remote slate quarries east of Blaenau Ffestiniog with the Ffestiniog Railway. It was in use by 1862, and remained so until progressively closed between 1956 and 1976. The route included three inclines, one of which became the last operational gravity incline in the North Wales slate industry. The tramway was worked by horses and gravity for much of its existence, but a diesel locomotive was used to haul wagons on the top section between 1953 and its closure in 1961.
Maenofferen quarry is a major slate quarry in the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, north Wales and one of the major users of the Ffestiniog Railway. It continues to produce crushed slate on a limited scale under the ownership of the nearby Llechwedd quarry.
Oakeley quarry is a slate quarry in the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, north Wales. It was the largest underground slate mine in the world, and had 26 floors spanning a vertical height of nearly 1,500 feet (460 m).
The Cwt y Bugail quarry is a former slate quarry located east of Blaenau Ffestiniog in Wales. It was first worked as a trial pit around 1840. Continuous production began in 1863 and continued until closure in 1961. The quarry was connected to the Ffestiniog Railway at Duffws Station via the Rhiwbach Tramway.
Chaloner is a preserved narrow-gauge steam locomotive. It was built in 1877 at De Winton's Union Works in Caernarfon and is an example of their distinctive vertical-boilered design, used in the North Wales slate industry.
Bryngwyn railway station is a former station which was the terminus for passengers on the Bryngwyn Branch of the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways, and later the Welsh Highland Railway. Beyond the station, an incline climbed the slope of Moel Tryfan to serve a series of slate quarries. Those connected by tramways to the incline head included the Alexandra quarry, Moel Tryfan quarry, Fron quarry, Braich quarry and Cilgwyn quarry.
Dorothea quarry is a disused slate quarry in the Nantlle Valley area in North Wales. It covers a large area near the village of Talysarn and contains three flooded deep lakes.
Nantlle was a railway station located in Talysarn, a neighbouring village to Nantlle, in Gwynedd, Wales.
Carnarvon Castle railway station was opened in 1856 by the narrow gauge Nantlle Railway near the foot of what is today the Allt Y Castell which slopes down to Caernarfon's harbour area. It was the line's northern terminus and was the closest of Caernarfon's ultimately five stations to the historic town centre.
The Slate Industry in the Nantlle Valley was the major industry of the area. The Nantlle Valley is the site of oldest slate quarry in Wales at Cilgwyn, and during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was a major centre of the Slate industry in Wales. The quarries of the area are a World Heritage Site.
Alexandra quarry was a slate quarry in North Wales, on the slopes of Moel Tryfan in north Gwynedd. It was part of one of the major slate quarrying regions of Wales, centred on the Nantlle Valley during the 19th and 20th centuries. Output increased when a connection to the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways branch to Bryngwyn was created. It closed in the late 1930s, but was subsequently amalgamated with the Moel Tryfan quarry, and production continued until the 1960s.
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