Bryn Eglwys quarry was a
slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
quarry
A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envi ...
and mine near
Abergynolwyn
Abergynolwyn ( en, Mouth of the River with a Whirlpool) is a village in southern Gwynedd, Wales, located at the confluence of the Nant Gwernol and the Afon Dysynni.
The population of the community which is named after the village of Llanfiha ...
, in
Merionethshire
, HQ= Dolgellau
, Government= Merionethshire County Council (1889-1974)
, Origin=
, Status=
, Start= 1284
, End=
, Code= MER
, CodeName= ...
(now part of
Gwynedd
Gwynedd (; ) is a county and preserved county (latter with differing boundaries; includes the Isle of Anglesey) in the north-west of Wales. It shares borders with Powys, Conwy County Borough, Denbighshire, Anglesey over the Menai Strait, and C ...
), Wales. More than 300 men worked at the site, making it the principal employer in the area. Two veins of slate, known as the
Broad Vein
The Broad Vein Mudstone Formation (commonly known as the Broad Vein, historically known as the Red Vein and in Welsh as Y Faen Goch) is an Ordovician lithostratigraphic group (a sequence of rock strata) in Mid Wales. The rock of the formation is s ...
and the
Narrow Vein
The Narrow Vein Mudstone Formation (commonly known as the Narrow Vein) is an Ordovician lithostratigraphic group (a sequence of rock strata) in Mid Wales. The rock of the formation is silty, homogeneous or finely-laminated mudstone. It generally a ...
, were worked. The geology continues eastwards towards
Corris
Corris is a village in the county of Gwynedd, Wales, about north of the town of Machynlleth. The village lies on the west bank of the Afon Dulas (which here forms the boundary with Powys), around that river's confluence with the Afon Deri ...
and
Dinas Mawddwy
Dinas Mawddwy () is a village in the community of Mawddwy in south-east Gwynedd, north Wales. It lies within the Snowdonia National Park, but just to the east of the main A470, and consequently many visitors pass the village by. Its population is ...
, and westwards towards
Tywyn
Tywyn (Welsh: ; in English often ), formerly spelled Towyn, is a town, community, and seaside resort on the Cardigan Bay coast of southern Gwynedd, Wales. It was previously in the historic county of Merionethshire. It is famous as the loc ...
. It was one of many quarries that worked these veins.
The site, which was in operation for just over 100 years, covered almost . It had several long tunnels up to to . However, since closure all buildings have been demolished. Most of its
incline
Incline, inclined, inclining, or inclination may refer to:
*Grade (slope), the tilt, steepness, or angle from horizontal of a topographic feature (hillside, meadow, etc.) or constructed element (road, railway, field, etc.)
*Slope, the tilt, steepn ...
s and infrastructure have become part of forestry plantations.
From 1866 until closure in 1948, the quarry was served by the narrow gauge
Talyllyn Railway
The Talyllyn Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Talyllyn) is a narrow gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1865Drummond 2015, page 17 ...
, which took the slate down to Tywyn for transfer to the
main line railway
The Main Line is a railway line in South East Queensland, Australia. It was opened in a series of sections between 1865 and 1867. It commences at Roma St Station in Brisbane and extends west 161 km to Toowoomba. It is the first narrow gau ...
.
History
John Pugh
In 1844 John Pugh or Pughe obtained a quarrying lease from Lewis Morris, the owner of the Bryneglwys Estate, for a term of 50 years.
Pugh was a local miner from
Aberdyfi
Aberdyfi (), also known as Aberdovey ( ), is a village and community in Gwynedd, Wales, located on the northern side of the estuary of the River Dyfi.
The population of the community was 878 at the 2011 census. The electoral ward had a larger ...
, who already owned other mines in the locality, including the notable
Dylife lead mine, which he owned, in association with Hugh Williams,
from 1809 until 1858. In 1846 Pugh obtained another lease, for the Cantrybedd land on the opposite side of the valley.
[ Pugh began commercial-scale quarrying in 1847 (this is recorded on a stone plaque in the quarry).] He sank a shaft into the Narrow Vein
The Narrow Vein Mudstone Formation (commonly known as the Narrow Vein) is an Ordovician lithostratigraphic group (a sequence of rock strata) in Mid Wales. The rock of the formation is silty, homogeneous or finely-laminated mudstone. It generally a ...
, which is now known as the Daylight Adit, and built a small mill nearby, which he connected to the foot of the shaft by a level.[ He transported the finished slates by ]pack horse
Pack or packs may refer to:
Places
* Pack, Austria, a municipality in Styria, Austria
* Pack, Missouri
* Chefornak Airport, Alaska, by ICAO airport code
Groups of animals or people
* Pack (canine), family structure of wild animals of the b ...
s for onward transport by ship, originally over the mountain ridge to the port of Pennal
Pennal is a village and community on the A493 road in southern Gwynedd, Wales, on the north bank of the Afon Dyfi/River Dovey, near Machynlleth.
It lies in the historic county of Merionethshire/ Sir Feirionnydd and is within the Snowdonia Na ...
, and later to the port of Aberdyfi
Aberdyfi (), also known as Aberdovey ( ), is a village and community in Gwynedd, Wales, located on the northern side of the estuary of the River Dyfi.
The population of the community was 878 at the 2011 census. The electoral ward had a larger ...
via the Fathew Valley
The Afon Fathew ( en, River Mathew/Fathew) is a river in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. The river is downstream from the Dolgoch Falls which is a popular nature site, and is followed for much of its course by the Talyllyn Railway.
Name
The basic ...
and along the coast.
Aberdovey Slate Co. Ltd.
In 1863 a group of mill
Mill may refer to:
Science and technology
*
* Mill (grinding)
* Milling (machining)
* Millwork
* Textile mill
* Steel mill, a factory for the manufacture of steel
* List of types of mill
* Mill, the arithmetic unit of the Analytical Engine early ...
owners from Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
, led by William McConnel, leased the quarry. Cotton shortages, caused by the American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
, had reduced the production of the mills and they were looking for other profitable enterprises. They formed the Aberdovey Slate Company Limited, to operate and manage the quarry, and planned to increase production at Bryn Eglwys. The main barriers to the quarry's expansion at the time were the transportation arrangements for finished slates, and the lack of a workforce near Bryn Eglwys. The new owners overcame the former difficulty by building the Talyllyn Railway
The Talyllyn Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Talyllyn) is a narrow gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1865Drummond 2015, page 17 ...
, a narrow gauge railway
A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and .
Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structur ...
which was designed by James Swinton Spooner
The Spooners of Porthmadog refers to the Spooner family of Porthmadog, North Wales who made important contributions to the development of narrow gauge railways both locally and throughout the world. James Spooner, together with his sons James Swi ...
. The railway ran from the Cantrybedd incline
The Talyllyn Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Talyllyn) is a narrow gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1865Drummond 2015, page 17 ...
, which marked the edge of Bryn Eglwys, along the Galltymoelfre Tramway
The Talyllyn Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Talyllyn) is a narrow gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1865Drummond 2015, page 17 ...
to the Alltwyllt incline
The Talyllyn Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Talyllyn) is a narrow gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1865Drummond 2015, page 17 ...
, and thence down the Fathew valley
The Afon Fathew ( en, River Mathew/Fathew) is a river in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. The river is downstream from the Dolgoch Falls which is a popular nature site, and is followed for much of its course by the Talyllyn Railway.
Name
The basic ...
to Tywyn
Tywyn (Welsh: ; in English often ), formerly spelled Towyn, is a town, community, and seaside resort on the Cardigan Bay coast of southern Gwynedd, Wales. It was previously in the historic county of Merionethshire. It is famous as the loc ...
, before turning south to reach Aberdyfi. The company built the village of Abergynolwyn
Abergynolwyn ( en, Mouth of the River with a Whirlpool) is a village in southern Gwynedd, Wales, located at the confluence of the Nant Gwernol and the Afon Dysynni.
The population of the community which is named after the village of Llanfiha ...
to house their workers. In total, the new owners invested around £160,000, , in developing the quarry, building houses for quarrymen in the village of Abergynolwyn and building the railway from the quarry to Tywyn.
When the Aberystwith and Welsh Coast Railway
The Aberystwith and Welsh Coast Railway was a standard gauge railway company, running a line along the west coast of Wales.
The railway was planned to run between Anglicised place name spellings were used during most of the history of the line ...
was opened between Aberdyfi and Tywyn in 1863, the Aberdovey Slate Company decided to terminate their own railway at , a transshipment point
Transshipment, trans-shipment or transhipment is the shipment of goods or containers to an intermediate destination, then to another destination.
One possible reason for transshipment is to change the means of transport during the journey (e.g ...
to the coastal railway.
The Aberdovey Slate Co. Ltd. was renamed the Abergynolwyn Slate Company Limited in 1867.[
]
McConnel era
Neither the quarry nor its associated railway were great commercial successes, and by 1879 the company had run out of funds. Both quarry and railway were put up for auction on 9 October 1879.[ ] After this and a subsequent auction failed to find a bidder, William McConnel personally bought both. In August 1880 a major storm burst the quarry's reservoir and required major capital to repair. Nevertheless, McConnel re-organised the quarry's finances, and there was then an upturn in the slate market which allowed the quarry to expand further.
McConnel died in 1902 and the quarry became the property of his son, W. H. McConnel. However, the leases on the land occupied by the quarry were close to running out, and the quarry was closed on 18 December 1909; the workers received only one day's notice of the closure. The remaining stocks at the quarry were sent down the railway, and the quarry's machinery began to be dismantled.
Henry Haydn Jones (Abergynolwyn Slate & Slab Co. Ltd.) era
In 1911 the local Liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...
, Henry Haydn Jones
Sir Henry Haydn Jones (27 December 1863 – 2 July 1950) was a Welsh Liberal Party politician.
Upbringing
Henry (sometimes known as "Harry") Haydn Jones was born in Ruthin, Wales. He was the son of Joseph David Jones (1827–70), a schoo ...
, purchased the quarry for , along with the Talyllyn Railway and the village of Abergynolwyn. He formed the Abergynolwyn Slate & Slab Company Limited, to operate the quarry, much like its predecessor, the ''Aberdovey Slate Company Limited''. New leases were signed with the landowners and the quarry resumed production.[ ]
Haydn Jones’ leases on the quarry land expired in 1941, but he continued to own and operate the quarry, with an annual tenancy.
The quarry remained in production until a serious collapse on 26 December 1946; it had been unsafe for some time. The stocks were sent to Tywyn by rail, and had all cleared by 1948.
After closure
Despite the closure of the quarry, Haydn Jones kept a passenger service operating on the railway until his death in 1950. The railway was taken over by a preservation group, becoming the first railway in the world to be operated by volunteers.
Bryn Eglwys was sold to the Forestry Commission
The Forestry Commission is a non-ministerial government department responsible for the management of publicly owned forests and the regulation of both public and private forestry in England.
The Forestry Commission was previously also respon ...
, and the surviving quarry buildings were demolished in the early 1980s.[ Some slates had already been removed from buildings in 1975–1976, and these were used as platform edging for extending the platform at .] A series of footpaths was created from starting from the Alltwylt Incline and along the Galltymoelfre Tramway
The Talyllyn Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Talyllyn) is a narrow gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1865Drummond 2015, page 17 ...
, though the path diverges from the Cantrybedd Incline due to a missing bridge.
Geology
Three parallel veins
Veins are blood vessels in humans and most other animals that carry blood towards the heart. Most veins carry deoxygenated blood from the tissues back to the heart; exceptions are the pulmonary and umbilical veins, both of which carry oxygenated b ...
of Ordovician
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start ...
slate run through mid Wales, from the region north of Dinas Mawddwy
Dinas Mawddwy () is a village in the community of Mawddwy in south-east Gwynedd, north Wales. It lies within the Snowdonia National Park, but just to the east of the main A470, and consequently many visitors pass the village by. Its population is ...
through Corris
Corris is a village in the county of Gwynedd, Wales, about north of the town of Machynlleth. The village lies on the west bank of the Afon Dulas (which here forms the boundary with Powys), around that river's confluence with the Afon Deri ...
and south west towards Tywyn
Tywyn (Welsh: ; in English often ), formerly spelled Towyn, is a town, community, and seaside resort on the Cardigan Bay coast of southern Gwynedd, Wales. It was previously in the historic county of Merionethshire. It is famous as the loc ...
. These veins are the southern edge of the Harlech Dome
The Harlech Dome is a geological dome in southern Snowdonia in north Wales. It extends approximately from Blaenau Ffestiniog in the north to Tywyn in the south, and includes Harlech, The Rhinogydd, Barmouth and Cadair Idris.
The geological lay ...
anticline
In structural geology, an anticline is a type of fold that is an arch-like shape and has its oldest beds at its core, whereas a syncline is the inverse of an anticline. A typical anticline is convex up in which the hinge or crest is the ...
which surfaces in the north at Blaenau Ffestiniog
Blaenau Ffestiniog is a town in Gwynedd, Wales. Once a slate mining centre in historic Merionethshire, it now relies much on tourists, drawn for instance to the Ffestiniog Railway and Llechwedd Slate Caverns. It reached a population of 12,00 ...
.[ Where the veins pass through the site of Bryn Eglwys, they are inclined at an angle of about 30 degrees from the horizontal, sloping downwards to the south-west. The widest of these veins is the thick ]Broad Vein
The Broad Vein Mudstone Formation (commonly known as the Broad Vein, historically known as the Red Vein and in Welsh as Y Faen Goch) is an Ordovician lithostratigraphic group (a sequence of rock strata) in Mid Wales. The rock of the formation is s ...
that lies to the north of the site and consists of layers of hard, grey shale
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...
with patches of slate. The Broad Vein slate is hard and durable, but does not split into thin sections, so is generally unsuitable for use as roofing slates.
The Red Vein
The Broad Vein Mudstone Formation (commonly known as the Broad Vein, historically known as the Red Vein and in Welsh as Y Faen Goch) is an Ordovician lithostratigraphic group (a sequence of rock strata) in Mid Wales. The rock of the formation is s ...
(also known as the Middle Vein) lies about south of the Broad Vein. It is about thick but contains low-quality, friable
Friability ( ), the condition of being friable, describes the tendency of a solid substance to break into smaller pieces under duress or contact, especially by rubbing. The opposite of friable is indurate.
Substances that are designated hazardous, ...
slate that contains a large number of fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s. This vein was not worked commercially at Bryn Eglwys.[ The ]British Geological Survey
The British Geological Survey (BGS) is a partly publicly funded body which aims to advance geoscientific knowledge of the United Kingdom landmass and its continental shelf by means of systematic surveying, monitoring and research.
The BGS h ...
now considers the Middle Vein to be a part of the Broad Vein, not a separate formation.
The third vein is the Narrow Vein
The Narrow Vein Mudstone Formation (commonly known as the Narrow Vein) is an Ordovician lithostratigraphic group (a sequence of rock strata) in Mid Wales. The rock of the formation is silty, homogeneous or finely-laminated mudstone. It generally a ...
which lies about south of the Middle Vein and is also about thick. It contains the highest quality slate of the three veins and the most commercially valuable, being easy to split into roofing slates and slabs and both durable and strong. The vein is mostly a continuous bed of slate, containing only the occasional seam of quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...
. However, the quality of the rock varies over the depth of the vein, with the best material being found nearest the surface.[
]
Description
References
External links
a history of the quarry
*A description o
the quarry and its history
and made b
the Welsh Mines Society
after a field trip to the quarry by them, in June 2004.
{{Welsh Slate Quarries
Slate mines in Gwynedd
Talyllyn Railway
Abergynolwyn
The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales