The single-track road to Cwm Ystradllyn wound further into the contours of the Welsh hills, the cottages and farmhouses becoming fewer and further apart with every bend. It was as if the terrain itself was muffling the intrusion of the modern world. A low rusted gate hung apologetically by a wooded dell through which a stream tinkled; it squeaked as I pushed it open. Cast-off shards of loose slate, as grey as a pigeon’s back, clinked sonorously beneath my feet as I climbed to slope. And there, at the top, surveying the wild moors, stood a towering structure. Four strong walls, three storeys high, punctured by rows of romanesque arched windows, only its roof missing. Nesting birds twittered from the gables and nodding glacier-blue harebells blanketed its foundations. The entire spectacle resembled a medieval Cistercian abbey. But what abbey would have a millrace cut into its floor for a towering but long-gone waterwheel? And what abbey would have a curving embankment, the remnants of a vanished rail line, climbing up to the second story? Abandoned and isolated on the moors, the ruin of the Ynysypandy Mill told its own story about the 19th century boom and bust that momentarily transformed the rugged and sparsely-inhabited mountains of northwestern Wales into the world’s main source for a very in-demand material: slate.

The UK has a rich and varied history. You might not realise that from looking at its UNESCO properties. By my reckoning The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales is now the UK’s 10th site to be inscribed relating to the UK’s industrial heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries. Blaenavon and Ironbridge are testament to the industrial production and use in engineering of iron, the Derwent Valley Mills represent the adoption and expansion of the mill system, all key requirements of what is commonly referred to as ‘the Industrial Revolution’. The slate industry was not a driver of the Industrial Revolution but rather a fairly niche by-product: industrialisation required urbanisation, urbanisation required housing construction, housing construction required roof slates. Slates were tough, impermeable and fairly light. Bricks could be made anywhere. Slates could not; the raw material had to be extracted where it occurred naturally and fashioned into tiles before being transported to the new boomtowns springing up within the UK and eventually worldwide.

‘Fairly niche’ but no less fascinating. And I fully endorse the decision to list this site. There are in particular three themes that I see represented by this inscription: the changes wrought on a wild and unforgiving landscape, the technical solutions adopted in the quest for production, and the question of employer-employee labour relationships.

Firstly, the landscape. This is a tough and wild corner of Great Britain. Away from the coast, roads are still largely restricted to glacial valleys and faults making travel times longer than they otherwise would be. The demand for slate sparked a sudden interest in these mountains with large scale extraction beginning in the late 18th century. This was industrial quarrying rather than precise mining, excavating huge chunks of the landscape and leaving gashes that can be seen today. The main pit at Penrhyn Quarry was a mile long and 1,800 feet deep and Dinorwig quarry covered more than 700 acres. And people were needed to provide a workforce. Existing settlements ballooned in size. What is now Blaenau Ffestioniog was an area of scattered farmsteads at the end of the 18th century. By 1850 the town had a population of just under 3,500; by 1881 it stood at over 11,000. By comparison it has now shrunk back down to around 4,000. Porthmadog grew from a population of 885 in 1821 to over 3,000 40 years later. Thomas Telford’s London to Holyhead road (now the A5) opened up the Ogwen Valley when it was constructed 1815-1826. A chapel built alongside it in 1823 formed the nucleus of the new town of Bethesda. Tramways and railway lines were laid to transport the finished slate from the inland quarries to newly developed harbours such as Porthmadog or Port Penrhyn (or, indeed the Seiont estuary below Caernarvon Castle, though the Slate Quay there is not part of this nomination).

The railroads are perhaps the biggest extant sign of technical solutions. The Ffestiniog Railway was constructed in the early 1830s to connect the quarries at Blaenau to the harbour at Porthmadog 22km away. The route to harbour was originally powered solely by gravity and carried only two loads: finished slate and horses (the horses rode down as passengers and were then used to haul the carriages back uphill to Blaenau). This railroad transitioned to steam locomotives as did others linking the Penrhyn quarry to Port Penrhyn and the Dinorwig workings to the sea. Different solutions had to be used to extract the slate depending on the angles at which the veins reached the surface. At Dinorwig workers chewed away at the southwest face of Elidir Fawr mountain. At Penrhyn a huge pit was sunk vertically. At Llechwedd the vein vanished diagonally under the hillside so adits were sunk across at various levels to permit the mountain to be hollowed out from within. Inclined planes can still be seen linking levels of terracing, most obviously alongside the Vivian quarry at Dinorwig, and some of the more isolated abandoned quarries in the Nanttle Valley still have in situ remnants of over technology like the Cornish beam engine (to pump water from lower levels) and aerial cableways known as ‘Blondins’ (to carry quarried material across the excavations). And a lot of this development was homegrown. The National Slate Museum demonstrates how Dinorwig had its own lumber mills and forges producing everything needed on site, from tools to cogs for the machinery to window panes. Trains for the Ffestiniog Railway were constructed at its Boston Lodge workings and still ply the route as a tourist attraction.

Finally, what I love about this nomination is that it provides an insight into labour relations. My view is that the UK’s previous industrial nominations from this period paint a rosier view of employer-employee relationships than is typically warranted. In the Derwent Valley Mills we see Richard Arkwright constructing the market town of Cromford for his labourers. At New Lanark Robert Owen introduced welfare programmes. Titus Salt created his model milltown of Saltaire with chapels and sanitation but no public houses. The quarry owners in north Wales were not so philanthropic. The fortune of the Pennant family of Penrhyn in particular was made through plantations in the Caribbean and by all accounts their management style did not change much when the slave trade was abolished and they pivoted from slave plantations to slate quarries. When George Douglas-Pennant lost his parliamentary seat at the 1868 general election his father sacked 80 quarry workers who he believed had not voted in his favour (the secret ballot was not introduced until 1872). While the North Wales Quarrymen’s Union was proclaimed in 1874 at Craig yr Undeb (‘Union Rock’) on the shores of Llyn Padarn at Dinorwig the Pennants refused to recognise it. The Great Strike of Penrhyn from 1900-03 remains the longest industrial dispute in British history. The National Slate Museum at Dinorwig recreates a worker’s cottage in Bethesda at the time of the strike and this can be contrasted with the home of the Pennants themselves at the fantasy ‘neo-Norman’ Penrhyn Castle estate.

Practicalities

Visitors can reach the general area by train, principally the main north coast route from Chester to Holyhead. From there you will generally need to rely on local buses or have your own transport. Even then, the landscape means that travel from one component to another will be disjointed and take longer than you might anticipate based on distance alone.

The World Heritage Area is a serial site made up of six separate cultural landscapes, five ringing Mount Snowdon in northern Gwynedd and one more located a considerable distance further south beyond Dolgellau. This allows different aspects of the inscription to be explored.  Dinorwig and Nanttle Valley comprise unified core areas; the other four have separate nuclei connected by railroads. I would argue that three of these landscapes are the main attractions, with the additional three being ‘nice-to-have’s.

Component 1: Penrhyn Slate Quarry and Bethesda, and the Ogwen valley to Port Penrhyn

The main London to Holyhead road, the A5, runs through the Ogwen Valley, a gap between the Carneddau (the largest continuous stretch of land over 2,500 in the country) to the north and the rugged Glyderau to the south. The town of Bethesda, with its many nonconformist chapels, serves as the key community in the area. The land south-west of the A5 was owned by the Pennant family, the Lords Penrhyn (which is why the bulk of the 19th century town was built to the north-east, on freehold land). Their Penrhyn Quarry was once the largest slate quarry in the world and today visitors can tour it via army truck (£20 for a 90 minute tour, over-5s only meaning that it was not suitable for us with a toddler) or just fly overhead on the UK’s longest zipwire. The scale of the quarry is not immediately apparent from the road alas. The Pennants themselves lived at Penrhyn Castle and Garden (£11 for adults, £5.50 for children), now managed by the National Trust, and a visit is instructive to see the life of luxury the extraction and export of slate created for them (though they had already made a lot of money in the 18th century through their slave-worked Caribbean sugar plantations); happily the interpretation at the site does not shy away from examining these aspects though on our visit access to the interior of the castle was limited due to Covid restrictions. So we never got to see the one ton bed carved out of slate for a visit by Queen Victoria (fun fact: Vic refused to sleep in it as she said it reminded her of a tombstone. I would have liked to be there to see Lord Pennant’s face!)

Without your own transport you will need to get to Bangor (1hr 20 on the North Wales rail line from Chester – the route goes through Conwy if you want to see its castle en route). The No 67 bus from Bangor will get you to Llandygai (for Penrhyn Castle) in 10 minutes and Bethesda (for the quarry) in just under 30.

Component 2: Dinorwig Slate Quarry Mountain Landscape

Llanberis is the outdoor adventure capital of North Wales, sitting as it does beneath Snowdon, the tallest mountain in Great Britain outside of Scotland. From town you have great views across a pair of linked lakes (Llyn Padarn and Llyn Peris) to where the Dinorwig quarry was hacked back into the hillside. The scale of it is immense. A grand series of stepped terraces, a dirty grey mirror to the rice terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras back Llyn Peris. The National Slate Museum (free entry, prebooking still recommended as of July 2021 due to Covid restrictions on numbers though barely enforced on our visit) now occupies Gilfach Ddu, the former workshops of the quarry. I found it managed to be both educational enough for me whilst also entertaining enough for my 5-year old son – highlights include recreated workers’ cottages from different eras, a huge waterwheel and slate-splitting demonstrations. Following the Vivian Trail through the neighbouring Llyn Padarn Country Park (turn right from the Museum and cross the road and railway tracks gives views of the terraces of the Vivian Quarry, the incline down which finished slate tiles were lowered to lakeshore and the former accommodation blocks of the Anglesey Barracks. The Quarry Hospital lies just a short walk further around the lake although opening times seem pretty oblique at present. A truncated remnant of the original railway that once ran down to the sea still offers short steam tours on the Llanberis Lake Railway (currently £25 for a private compartment seating up to six – we chose to have a ride on the Ffestiniog Railway instead).

Without your own transport you will again have to make for Bangor. Buses leave for Llanberis from right outside the train station and take about an hour (an alternative would be a 30 minute bus ride to Caernarfon to tick off another castle and then a further 30 minute bus ride from there). I would recommend yopur own transport though to ensure you can drop down into the valley from the east through the spectacular Pen-y-Pass and see the landscape and the scale of the Dinorwig workings opening up before you. Llanberis does have numerous carparks, all of which seem to charge different amounts. My non-exhaustive investigation suggests that the carpark right outside the Museum looks best value.

Component 3: Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape

I’m afraid our visit was limited to driving through Nantlle Village (pretty undistinguished; some quarrymen’s terraced housing to the south of the road and views of slag heaps to the north) while our children slept in the back seat. The wider quarry landscape beyond the village sounds interesting with some relict industrial machinery like a Cornish beam engine and ‘Blondin’ aerial ropeways. Theoretically it should be possible to get here on public transport (bus from Bangor or Caernarfon to Penygroes, followed by a second bus to Talysarn or Nantlle). I’m not sure I would bother though.

Component 4: Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarries, Railways and Mill

Like Nantlle, this component is in no-way a ‘must see’. It is not as important as Penrhyn, Dinorwig or Blaenau Ffestiniog / Porthmadog for a very simple reason – the quarries in this area were failures. Attempts to quarry slate here failed miserably despite the effort and money expended. All that remains of the worker’s village of Treforys is the bare footprint of three streets of houses mouldering on the moorland. However, for those driving on the A487 between Porthmadog and Caernarfon a brief detour north on single track roads towards Cwm Ystradllyn is worthwhile if only to gape at the ruins of Ynysypandy Mill. The skeletal three-storey structure was built some distance away from the quarries due to the lack of running water required to power its overshot waterwheel and slate was brought to site via railway (seen entering the mill from the right in the photo above). All that remains of it now is a roofless husk on a hillock still strewn with shards of discarded slate but its resemblance to a monastic abbey is highly romantic (and overseas visitors may appreciate the chance to photograph it alongside a classic red British telephone box). Entry is via a gate (labelled Pont y Pandy Mill) by the bridge to the left of the phone box. I believe it is possible to drive further on even smaller roads to reach Gorseddau quarry and the remains of Treforys but I didn’t want to risk my wife’s goodwill (or our car’s suspension) any further.

Without a car you’re looking at a lengthy bus ride to Penforma (70 minutes from Bangor, 45 from Caernarfon) followed by a walk of well over an hour either way just to reach the mill, which seems extreme for a photo opportunity.

Component 5: Ffestioniog, its Slate Mines and Quarries, ‘city of slates’ and Railway to Porthmadog

Blaenau Ffestiniog proclaims itself to be ‘the slate capital of the world’ despite the fact that production here (as elsewhere in North Wales) is but a fraction of that at the end of the 19th century. It is a horseshoe-shaped town, fitting itself to the topography and backed by a landscape of grey crags and spoil heaps. The town itself is inscribed and we stayed in a terraced house in Manod, its eastern leg, but it currently has little outstanding to show for it.

The slate veins here sloped down from the mountain tops meaning that extraction from the surface risked bringing overhangs toppling down. As a result access to the veins was by adits through the rock with the slate being carved out within the mountains itself. The Llechwedd Slate Caverns provides an informational look at how this occurred through its Deep Mine Tour (£60 for up to four people). Neighbouring Zip World offers trampolining or canyoning in other sections of the mines. Mindful of the continued risk of Covid in areas with limited air circulation we regretfully decided to skip these attractions.

The Ffestiniog Railway links the town to the coast at Porthmadog. Heritage steam trains still ply the original route (with one exception where a diversion had to be built in the 1970s to avoid a new reservoir). Annoyingly, all return trips start and end at Porthmadog – it is impossible to book a ticket from Blaenau to Porthmadog and back. Depending on the day, trips may go only part way. We paid £60 for a private compartment for two adults (partitioned off from a larger carriage for Covid reasons) plus £1 for an additional child for a return trip to the spiral above Duallt station. The journey is very jolly, across the narrow ‘Cob’ that turned the broad Glaslyn estuary into a polder and permitted the construction of port facilities in the deeper channel remaining. You pass several rail worksheds and quarry warehouses before the pull uphill along the valley edge. Upon reaching Duallt we then came back to pause for an hour at Tan y Bwlch station, which wasn’t quite long enough to sprint down to see Plas Tan y Bwlch (home of the quarry-owning Oakeley family) itself. The trains that transported us, the 1864 Palmerston and the 1867 Welsh Pony (used for a bit of extra oomph up the track between Tan y Bwlch and Duallt) are original to this line. In Porthmadog itself the harbour from where slate was exported is now a rather pleasant marina.

Blaenau is actually still connected to the UK’s rail network. It is therefore the most accessible centre for exploring this WHS for those without their own transport because it is served by regular trains. If coming in from Chester you will need to alight after 50 minutes to change trains at Llandudno Junction (or the very cunning could stay on one further stop to Conwy, explore the castle and city walls there, and then walk back over the bridge for a mile to reach the interchange) and then travel for an hour down the exceptionally scenic Conwy Valley line. But with the Ffestiniog Railway only serving the town infrequently you still need a 30 minutes bus ride down to Porthmadog, which is itself 70 minutes by bus from Bangor.

Component 6 (Bryneglwys Slate Quarry, Abergynolwyn Village and the Talyllyn Railway) is located well to the south of the other components. Tywyn, for the Talyllyn Railway, is an hour by road or 80 minutes by mainline train from Blaenau. We didn’t even try to visit.

 

World Heritage-iness: 2

My experience: 3

(Visited July 2021)