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. [1]
The slate veins that cross the Nantlle Valley are nearly vertical. The Faengoch ("Red Vein") runs through the Cilgwyn and Braich quarries and produced red and purple coloured slates. The Pen-y-Bryn quarry produced purple and blue slates with a thin vein of green slate between them. [2]
Dyffryn Nantlle was one of the major slate quarrying regions of Wales during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, having at least 37 operating slate quarries at one given time. It was an innovative region in the development of the slate industry. The Cilgwyn quarry on the north side of the valley is the oldest in Wales and one of the oldest in Europe, dating from the 12th century. [3] By the start of the 19th century, slate was still being extracted in a primitive manner:
"The stones were smashed up with a hammer without any rule; any piece of rock which happened to be of anything like a slate was made use of, but at least half of the good rock was destroyed. The men at that time took contracts from the landowners, paying two guineas per annum for the privilege of quarrying slates. Each man dug a hole where he thought proper, and many of the quarries to this day are suffering from the heedless way in which the holes were excavated and the rubble disposed of usually thrown out close to the hole on the good vein." [3]
The first steam engine to be used in the slate industry was a pump installed at the Hafodlas quarry in the valley in 1807. Slate roofing tiles have been excavated at Segontium Roman camp in Caernarfon and are thought to have originated in the Nantlle Valley.
Unlike most of the other slate producing regions in Wales the Nantlle Valley developed a large number of small, independent quarries because most of the land in the valley was owned by a number of small landowners rather than a single large landowner. At the height of the industry there were over 50 quarries being worked in the valley. [4]
Due to this the quarries were never managed as a large single concern as they were in the Penrhyn, Dinorwic and the Festiniog area quarries and this led to the industry in the area being much more vulnerable to any downturns in the economy. This also led to the development of an industrial landscape that is quite different from the other slate quarrying regions in that there are a large number of small waste slate heaps around the valley.[ citation needed ]
A dispute between local crofter-quarrymen and the local large landowner, Lord Newborough of the Wynn family from Glynllifon became an important legal landmark in the early 19th century. In 1823, Lord Newborough tried to have a law passed to give him control of all the Moel Tryfan Commons, including recent encroachments, and to extinguish the rights of common use. This move was met with fearsome opposition, not least from one John Evans who was concerned that enclosure around the Cilgwyn quarries would affect his own interests, particularly over a dam and watercourse that he had constructed on Crown land in 1816. Evans organised a commoners’ petition against the Bill, with seven hundred signatures. The petitioners claimed that their cottages had been built over forty years earlier, that originally the land had been too wild for cultivation, and that they had improved it by hard work. This led to a change in the land enclosure law in the United Kingdom. [5]
Another dispute much celebrated in the area took place a generation later centred on the largest quarry in the valley. Dorothea Quarry was bought in 1835 by an Englishman called Muskett. He spent heavily on new equipment to raise the wagons from the quarry bottom. But he overspent, and was declared bankrupt a few years later. The quarry was closed with three months wages owing to most of the workers. They consequently revolted and demolished the new house Muskett had built for himself - Plas y Cilgwyn.[ citation needed ]
There were considerable difficulties involved in raising slate from the pits and in keeping them free from water, and the ingenious ways which were found to solve these problems, including blondins, chain inclines, powered rail inclines and vast revetments, are some of the principal reasons why the slate quarrying remains in this area, many of which are unique, are so important. Some of the principal features include the 1906 Cornish beam-engine at Dorothea, a unique survival in Wales, the mill and a number of pyramids, also unique, and the blondins at Pen-yr-Orsedd quarry. [4]
Cilgwyn quarry installed a water-powered rail incline in 1825, to help remove fallen rock from a pit - one of the first recorded uses of this technology. In 1899, the first two blondins in the slate industry were installed at Pen-yr-orsedd; they were each powered by a 2-cylinder stationary steam engine. The next blondin at the quarry in 1906 was powered by an electrical motor, supplied by the newly installed power line from the North Wales Power and Traction Company. [4]
Slate from the quarries was transported to the major local shipping point at Caernarfon by pack horse. In 1813, a railway was proposed to allow the Nantlle quarries to compete with the nearby Dinorwic and Penrhyn quarries - in 1822, it cost Cilgwyn quarry 20 shillings to ship 1,000 slates from the quarry to Caernarfon - equivalent to £87in 2016. [6] An Act of Parliament was passed on 20 May 1825 and the Nantlle Railway Company was incorporated in June 1825. The chief engineer was George Stephenson and construction was overseen by his son Robert, assisted by John Gillespie. [7] The 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge railway was opened in 1828.
In 1867, the Nantlle Railway was acquired by the Carnarvonshire Railway and the northern part of the line was converted to standard gauge. In 1870 it was acquired by the London and North Western Railway and became part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway in 1923, and then British Railways in 1948. The 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge section continued to be operated using horses until it closed in 1963. [8]
The majority of the slate quarries in the Nantlle Valley were connected to the Nantlle Railway. However, the Alexandra, Moel Tryfan, Fron, Braich and Cilgwyn quarries, near the summit of Moel Tryfan, were connected by an incline to the Bryngwyn branch of the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways. [9] Cilgwyn quarry was the only one that shipped slate out via both the Nantlle and North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways. [10]
The major slate quarries in the Nantlle Valley were: [7] [11]
The North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways (NWNGR) was a railway company that planned to build a number of inter-connected 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in narrow-gauge railways across North Wales. The first two of these lines - jointly known as the "Moel Tryfan Undertaking" - were authorised by Act of Parliament 1872 and were built and opened in the 1870s. The original main line ran from Dinas Junction to Bryngwyn and opened in 1877. The second line was a branch from Tryfan Junction to South Snowdon, though shortly after opening, the company designated the Tryfan Junction to Bryngwyn section as the branch, and the Dinas Junction to South Snowdon section as the main line.
The Nantlle Valley is an area in Gwynedd, North Wales, characterised by its numerous small settlements.
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.
The slate industry is the industry related to the extraction and processing of slate. Slate is either quarried from a slate quarry or reached by tunneling in a slate mine. Common uses for slate include as a roofing material, a flooring material, gravestones and memorial tablets, and for electrical insulation.
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 Junction and Portmadoc Railway is a defunct Welsh tramway.
The Dinorwic Railway was an early 2 ft narrow gauge industrial railway connecting the slate quarry at Dinorwic in Caernarvonshire with the coastal port at Y Felinheli. The line is sometimes referred to as the Dinorwic Tramroad or the Dinorwic Tramway.
Pen-yr-Orsedd quarry was a slate quarry in the Nantlle Valley in North Wales. It was one of the last slate quarries operating in North Wales and the last operating in the Nantlle Valley area, finally closing in 1979.
Rhosgadfan is a Welsh village in the county of Gwynedd, formerly in the historic county of Caernarfonshire, and in the community of Llanwnda. It is notable as the birthplace of Kate Roberts, one of the greatest Welsh-language writers of the 20th century; her childhood home is now a museum.
Y Fron, also known locally as Cesarea, after the chapel, is a country village on the south-west side of Moel Tryfan, overlooking the Nantlle Valley, in North Wales, near Rhosgadfan and Carmel, on the tail of Mynydd Mawr, with epic views of Trum Y Ddysgl and Craig Cwm Silyn. It is in the community of Llandwrog.
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.
Blondins were a type of material ropeway; they were named after the famous tightrope walker Charles Blondin.
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.
The original Welsh Highland Railway (WHR) owed its existence to the narrow gauge railways and tramways built to serve commercial slate traffic from slate quarries and other mineral extraction operations along its route.
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.
Cilgwyn quarry is a slate quarry located on the north edge of the Nantlle Vale, in North Wales. It is one of the earliest slate quarries in Great Britain, being worked as early as the 12th century. King Edward I of England was reputed to have stayed in a house roofed by Cilgwyn slates, during the Welsh wars of independence. It is one of the major slate quarries in the Nantlle Valley area.
Votty & Bowydd quarry is a major slate quarry in the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, North Wales. It was one of the major users of the Ffestiniog Railway. It opened in 1870 In the quarry's peak years around 1900, the quarry produced around 17,000 tons-per-annum of slate, employing 500 men. It continues to produce crushed slate on a limited scale under the ownership of the nearby Llechwedd quarry.
Hugh Beaver Roberts was a solicitor, originally based in Bangor, Caernarfonshire who became an entrepreneur involved in the construction of narrow gauge railways and the ownership of slate quarries in North Wales during the second half of the 19th century.
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.
| Companies | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finance | |||||
| Banking |
| ||||
| Policy | |||||
| Localised | |||||
| People and labour | |||||
| Sectors | |||||
| Theory |
| ||||
