Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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]
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.
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]
The horse-drawn 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge Nantlle Railway served the quarries from 1828 to 1963, although from 1865 the line was cut back to Tyddyn Bengam, and in 1871 only the portion from the standard gauge railhead at Nantlle railway station in Talysarn was in use. The Nantlle Railway has a long history as an industrial and passenger line.
The quarry sits at the bottom of the wide Nantlle valley and consists of six pits, the deepest dropping 106m from the surface. The slate veins here run vertically, allowing unusually deep vertical pits to be dug. Because the pits fall below the water table they needed to be constantly pumped to stay dry.
William Darbishire took over direct management of the quarry that year and by 1882 had raised production to almost 8,000 tons. [1] Pen-yr-Orsedd was one of the major slate producers of the Nantlle Valley. It was the last of the Nantlle quarries to commercially produce slate, closing in 1979.
The Nantlle Railway (or Nantlle Tramway) 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 ...
The first steam engine to be used in the slate industry was a pump installed at the Hafodlas quarry in the Nantlle Valley in 1807, but most quarries relied on hydropower to drive machinery. [25] Wales was by now producing more than half the United Kingdom's output of slate, 26,000 tons out of a total UK production of 45,000 tons in 1793. [26]