The Deeside and Moelfferna quarries were neighbouring slate

quarries 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 envir ...

, near

Glyndyfrdwy Glyndyfrdwy (), or sometimes Glyn Dyfrdwy, is a village in the modern county of Denbighshire, Wales. It is situated on the A5 road halfway between Corwen and Llangollen in the Dee Valley (the river Dee is ''Afon Dyfrdwy'' in Welsh). History A ...

North Wales North Wales ( cy, Gogledd Cymru) is a region of Wales, encompassing its northernmost areas. It borders Mid Wales to the south, England to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north and west. The area is highly mountainous and rural, with Snowdonia N ...

. They were both operated by the same company throughout their history, and were both connected by the

Deeside Tramway The Deeside Tramway was a gravity and horse-worked, narrow gauge industrial railway connecting the slate workings on the Dee valley with the main road at Glyndyfrdwy See Deeside Tramway rail, Glyndyfrdwy, Denbighshire further down page. and lat ...

to the Llangollen and Corwen Railway.

History

Early working: 1870-1900

The original owner of the Deeside quarry was the 1870 Dee Side Slate and Slab Quarry Ltd. The company was sold in 1875. In 1876, the Moelferna and Dee Side Slate and Slab Quarries Company was formed to purchase both the Deeside quarry and the Moelfferna quarry. In 1885, the quarries supplied a large slab cistern to the

Guinness Brewery St. James's Gate Brewery is a brewery founded in 1759 in Dublin, Ireland, by Arthur Guinness. The company is now a part of Diageo, a company formed from the merger of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan in 1997. The main product of the brewery is ...

in Dublin. The tank measured by by and was believed to be one of the largest stone tank built at the time.

Accidents: 1900-1915

In 1907 there was a serious accident at the quarry. Edward Rowlands was riding on a loaded slate wagon that was sent down from the Deeside quarry to the head of the incline down to Glyndyfrdwy. Rowlands was on the first wagon of a sequence of four, with the quarry manager Richard Roberts following in a second loaded wagon. The brake failed on the fourth wagon and it gathered speed; the quarryman leapt from the wagon and shouted a warning to the men ahead. The quarryman on the third wagon also jumped free, and the two out-of-control wagons collided with Robert's wagon. He jumped, but sustained serious injuries. The three wagons then hit Rowlands' wagon, derailing all four wagons and causing Rowlands fatal injuries to the lower body. In 1915, two men, Robert Jones and John Lloyd, were crushed by an unexpected rockfall, weighing 100 tons, in the quarry.

Decline and closure: 1918-1947

After the First World War, the chairman of the company was Percy Dean, who was the MP for

Blackburn Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, east of Preston and north-n ...

. The Deeside quarry ceased working in the 1920s, but the Deeside slate works continued in production using slate from Moelfferna quarry. The enterprise closed in 1947.

Transport

The gauge Deeside Tramway connected the two quarries to the Deeside Slate Works and on down to the transhipment wharf at Glyndyfrdwy. The tramway originally ran between the slate works and Deeside quarry, before being extended in the late 1870s down to the wharf.

Geology

Several beds of

Ordovician The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya. T ...

shales and mudstones run across Mid Wales, from Tywyn in the south-west to Chirk in the north-east. At various points along this band, these sedimentary rocks have undergone compression and metamorphosis into slate. The Pen-y-glog slate veins on the southern slopes of the Dee valley are worked by the quarries.

References

External links

{{Welsh Slate Quarries Corwen Slate mines in Denbighshire 1870 establishments in Wales 1947 disestablishments in Wales Industrial railways in Wales Railway inclines in Wales 2 ft gauge railways in Wales 2 ft 6 in gauge railways in Wales