Location | |
---|---|
Location in Gwynedd | |
Location | near Bethesda |
County | Gwynedd |
Country | Wales, UK |
Coordinates | 53°11′0.71″N4°3′40.12″W / 53.1835306°N 4.0611444°W grid reference SH6228467174 |
Production | |
Products | Slate |
Type | Quarry |
History | |
Discovered | 1830s |
Opened | 1853 |
Active | 1853-1873; 1874-1914; 1919-1930 |
Closed | 1930 |
The Pantdreiniog quarry (also known as the Pant Dreiniog quarry) was a slate quarry within the town of Bethesda in North Wales. It was worked between about 1825 [1] and 1923. [2] It played a significant part in the Penrhyn Great Strike, Britain's longest industrial dispute.
The early history of the quarry is obscure, but it appears to have started around 1825, [3] and was certainly working in 1845, when quarryman John Hughes of Maentwrog fell to his death into the pit, which was then 40 yards (37 m) deep. [4] In 1860, owned by William Owen, the Pantdreiniog Slate Company produced 3,000 tons of slate, [5] dropping to 1,372 tons produced by 30 men in 1864. [6] During the 1860s, the quarry expanded and took over the adjacent Coetmor Quarry. [7] Sometime in the late 1860s the quarry closed.
In 1872, the quarry was re-opened by the Bangor and Pant-Dreiniog Slate Co. (Ltd.) and took on 50 workers. That year they produced 1,500 tons of finished slate. [8] In 1884, it was recorded as worked by the Pant Dreiniog Slate Company and producing blue, purple and red slates, [9] but that was the only year the quarry worked between 1881 and 1886, leaving the quarrymen out of work and reliant on charity. [10]
In 1896, a major industrial dispute at the nearby Penrhyn quarry resulted in hundreds of quarrymen being locked out and left without work. [11] Alderman William John Parry was determined to help. Parry had been one of the founders of the North Wales Quarrymen's Union in 1874, and was the union's first general secretary. [12] He led a syndicate from South Wales that purchased Pantdreiniog [13] and was appointed manager of the quarry. By October he had taken on 40 workers, announcing his intention to only employ married men in an effort to support the families of the strikers as well as the men. [14] This venture failed, and in March 1900 Parry was forced to put the quarry up for sale. [15] There was no successful bid at the auction, and the quarry company went into liquidation, throwing 106 men out of work. [16]
On 22 November 1900, the continued friction between the quarrymen an owners at Penrhyn quarry resulted in another strike and lock out. This was the start of the "Great Strike of Penrhyn", which lasted for three years and was the longest dispute in British industrial history. [11] 2,000 skilled workers were locked out and left without income. Parry saw an opportunity to provide work for the strikers at Pantdreiniog. In March 1901, he restarted the quarry as a worker's co-operative. In the first month of operation, the quarry turned a small profit and was able to pay wages of 32s 6p (equivalent to £171 in 2018) a week. [17] Slate produced here was shipped via the LNWR to Deganwy on the River Conwy. [18]
This initial attempt failed sometime in 1902, but in the summer 1903, with the Penrhyn strike still underway, Parry tried again. A new enterprise North Wales Quarries Ltd. was started, funded mainly by the North Wales Quarrymen's Union. The union contributed over £15,000 (£1,582,148) to purchase Pantdreiniog, along with the nearby Moel Faban and Tanybwlch quarries. [19] The quarries were together called the Bethesda Co-operative Quarries [20] and Parry was appointed the Managing Director. [21] The company was formally incorporated on 3 October 1903. [22] Richard Bell, the MP for Derby was the chairman of the company. [23]
In November 1903, the Penrhyn strike ended and many quarrymen started to return to work there. [24]
Despite the good intentions, a rift developed between Parry and the union. Parry's terms of employment were seen as almost as draconian as those that cause the Great Strike at Penrhyn. The President of the union, Henry Jones, was among the quarrymen who refused to work at the co-operative under Parry. In his 1905 address to the union he said:
One of the greatest dangers of labour organisations was to fall into the hands of men ... who professed sympathy with the common people merely in order to attain personal ends. He would say nothing of the agreement which he and others refused to sign, and for which they had been discharged, because, as Mr W. J. Parry admitted, "they had not accepted the terms of the company. If the agreement was fair, then the whole history of the Union was of no avail. [16]
Parry had locked out his quarrymen over the disagreement about their contracts and was generally held to be against the workers and the union. [16]
By May 1906, Pantdreiniog was back at work, [25] but slate prices were falling, and in 1909 the company laid off 55 of its men. [26] The quarry closed in October 1910. [27]
After the First World War, there was a brief boom in the slate industry as a large number of new houses were built in Britain under the Addison Act. In 1919, a new company the Pant Dreiniog Slate Quarry Company Ltd. was formed. It intended to rework material from the quarry's waste tips and pulverise it. The resulting slate dust would be formed into bricks and slabs. Initially only the grinding operation took place at the quarry, with the dust shipped to factories in Birmingham and Leigh where it was pressed into bricks. Because this process did not require the firing used to make traditional clay bricks, it was claimed to be a faster and cheaper alternative. As well as bricks, the company experimented with creating rubber goods, Portland cement, paint and pottery. [28]
Yet again, William Parry was involved in the new company, [29] called the North Wales Development Company. The company purchased a 30 inches (760 mm) Bradley pulverizing machine for grinding the waste and also attempted to build prefabricated houses using slate slabs in steel frame for the walls. [30] Parry died in 1927, and it appears that this final effort to work Pant Dreiniog for slate failed at or just before this date.
Finding enough space to tip the large amounts of waste slate is a problem for all slate quarries. Pantdreiniog was surrounded on three sides by the houses of Bethesda, so finding enough tipping space was particularly difficult. In the 1880s, they purchased a row of houses on Cilfodan Street and tipped over them. [7] The high tips were held back by pack walls. After the quarry closed, the tips remained. They were considered both dangerous and a significant urban blight. [31]
Between 1957 and 1976 the Pantdreiniog pit was used as a landfill site. [32] In the 1980s, the waste tips were removed and the quarry site was turned into open land.
Like most of the local slate quarries, Pantdreiniog had an extensive internal tramway system, of approximately 2 ft (610 mm) gauge. Before 1900, a long incline ran up the east side of the pit, powered by a steam engine. [33] Parry's enterprise of 1896 saw the quarry re-equipped and the incline was replaced by a lift on the north edge of the pit. Tramways ran east to the mill, then south to the waste tips above the town. [34] The North Wales Quarries Ltd. further expanded the tramway network after they took over in 1903. They also purchased a steam locomotive from W.G. Bagnall to work the every lengthening tip line above Tan-y-Ffordd. [35]
Two steam locomotives worked at the quarry, supplied by W.G. Bagnall. They were works number 1726 delivered in October 1903 and named Richard Bell, and works number 1863, delivered in November 1907, named J C Grey. Both were 0-4-0 ST locomotives of the Mercedes class. [36]
Bethesda is a town and community on the River Ogwen and the A5 road on the edge of Snowdonia, in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. It is the fifth-largest community in Gwynedd.
The Penrhyn Quarry Railway was a narrow gauge railway in Caernarfonshire, Wales. It served the Penrhyn quarry near Bethesda, taking their slate produce to Port Penrhyn, near Bangor. The railway was around six miles (9.7 km) long and used a gauge of 1 ft 10+3⁄4 in.
George Sholto Gordon Douglas-Pennant, 2nd Baron Penrhyn, was a landowner who played a prominent part in the Welsh slate industry as the owner of the Penrhyn Quarry in North Wales.
The Penrhyn quarry is a slate quarry located near Bethesda, North Wales. At the end of the nineteenth century it was the world's largest slate quarry; the main pit is nearly 1 mile (1.6 km) long and 1,200 feet deep, and it was worked by nearly 3,000 quarrymen. It has since been superseded in size by slate quarries in China, Spain and the USA. Penrhyn is still Britain's largest slate quarry but its workforce is now nearer 200.
Richard Bell was one of the first two British Labour Members of Parliament, and the first for an English constituency, elected after the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900.
Edward Gordon Douglas-Pennant, 1st Baron Penrhyn, was a Scottish landowner in Wales and Jamaica, and a Conservative Party politician. He played a major part in the development of the Welsh slate industry.
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The Hendre-Ddu Tramway was a 1 ft 11 in narrow gauge industrial railway built in 1874 in Mid-Wales to connect the Hendre-Ddu slate quarry to Aberangell station on the Mawddwy Railway. It consisted of a main line 3+1⁄2 miles (5.6 km) long and several branch lines and spurs serving other quarries, local farms and the timber industry.
Dinorwic quarry is a large former slate quarry, now home to the Welsh National Slate Museum, located between the villages of Llanberis and Dinorwig in Wales. At its height at the turn of the century, it was the second largest slate quarry in Wales, after the neighbouring Penrhyn quarry near Bethesda. Dinorwic covered 700 acres (283 ha) consisting of two main quarry sections with 20 galleries in each. Extensive internal tramway systems connected the quarries using inclines to transport slate between galleries. Since its closure in 1969, the quarry has become the site of the National Slate Museum, a regular film location, and an extreme rock climbing destination.
Tregarth is a village near Thomas Telford's A5 London to Holyhead road between the town of Bethesda and the city of Bangor in Gwynedd, north Wales. It is in Llandygai Community. It had a population of over 1,300 as of the 2011 census..
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.
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Gilfach Ddu are a series of well preserved Grade I listed industrial buildings built to serve the Dinorwic slate quarry near Llanberis in Caernarfonshire, North Wales. The workshops are a complex of repair and maintenance buildings, that were built in 1870 to build and maintain the machinery used in the quarry. The complex includes saw sheds, patternmaking shops, a foundry with copula, blacksmiths shops, fitting shops, stores, engine sheds, a canteen, the chief engineers house, a hand operated crane and two waterwheels which provided the site with its power. Since 1972 the buildings have housed the National Slate Museum.
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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