The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales is the UK’s nomination for 2021. It will be a serial site with 7 components. Each of the components consists of a number of ‘elements’ – the most noteworthy “physical features which embody the attributes of Outstanding Universal value”. That value is to be found in (ii) the technology transfer to continental Europe and the USA, (iv) the dramatic impact of large-scale exploitation of natural resources and (v) the legacy of the industrial workers and their settlements. Its official name has been changed from “Slate Industry ..” to “Slate Landscape”, obviously emphasizing the cultural landscape approach.

I visited one of the components, the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, on my way to the Gwynedd Castles in 2011. I’ve got a couple of photos left, but I must admit that I did not write up anything about the side trip and I can remember almost zero. What I see when I look at those photos again is a town that could only be in the UK: straight rows of similar stone houses (cheap housing for the quarrymen), a fish and chip shop, an Anglican church (they call it “Church of Wales” over here), a WWI memorial. It is surrounded by steep natural hills and man-made waste dumps. All photos appear to be taken in black-and-white as grey is the prominent colour of it all (including of course the slate roofs).

At the center of the town lies a railway station, which is the terminus of a narrow-gauge heritage railway. It was originally built to connect the quarries with the sea. The railway tracks and the “sense of arrival” (when doing so by train) are prominent features in the WH nomination. Most of the photos that I still have are railway related, so it must have been the town’s most impressive sight. In hindsight, St. David’s Church (now advertising bilingual services but in the past all churches preached in Welsh) and the market hall with interesting architecture might have warranted a closer look.

Desk research in 2020 reveals that there is a (slightly outdated?) nomination website available in Welsh and English, and the Management Plan can be found online as well. It is all well-presented and I don’t think there will be many objections getting it inscribed. But just as with my short visit, the presentation does leave an aftertaste of “Is this special enough?”. There was no element mentioned where I’d would be really interested enough to go back for a ‘proper’ visit. There’s the social history of course and the exploited landscape - this recent work might be an interesting read to get a better feel for the Welsh Slate history. Excerpts are readable for free online.

In ICOMOS’s Filling the Gaps document of 2005, that had the goal of identifying under-represented categories, post-Industrial Revolution technological properties located in Europe and North America were considered “overwhelmingly” present already. However, in the years since several more have been added to the List. Among those is for example the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape which is geographically and thematically close to the Welsh Slate Industry Landscape. One of its arguments in the comparative analysis was that tin mining was not represented yet, and – indeed - slate mining also isn’t. But do we really need all imagineable resources represented?