Pen-yr-Orsedd quarry was a

slate quarry The slate industry is the industry related to the extraction and processing of slate. Slate is either quarried from a ''slate quarry'' or reached by tunneling in a ''slate mine''. Common uses for slate include as a roofing material, a flooring ma ...

in the

Nantlle Valley The Nantlle Valley ( cy, Dyffryn Nantlle, ) is an area in Gwynedd, North Wales, characterised by its numerous small settlements. The area is also historically important geologically, and featured in one of the most contentious disputes of the ...

North Wales , area_land_km2 = 6,172 , postal_code_type = Postcode , postal_code = LL, CH, SY , image_map1 = Wales North Wales locator map.svg , map_caption1 = Six principal areas of Wales common ...

. It was one of the last slate quarries operating in North Wales and the last operating in the Nantlle Valley area, finally closing in 1979.

History

Pen-yr-Orsedd opened in 1816, owned by William Turner who was also the owner of the nearby

Dorothea quarry Dorothea quarry is a disused slate quarry in the Nantlle Valley area in North Wales. It covers a large area near the village of Talysarn and contains three flooded deep lakes. History Turner family The quarry commenced working in the earl ...

and the Diphwys Casson quarry in

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 ...

. It was acquired on 1854 by John Lloyd Jones who sold it on to the Darbishire Company, owners of the Penmaenmawr granite quarries, in 1862. The new owners invested £20,000 () to expand the quarry, though with limited results; by 1871 the quarry was producing just 500 tons per year. William Darbishire took over direct management of the quarry that year and by 1882 had raised production to almost 8,000 tons. Pen-yr-Orsedd was one of the major slate producers of the

. It was the last of the Nantlle quarries to commercially produce slate, closing in 1979.

Narrow-gauge railway museum

Railway enthusiast Rich Morris began collecting narrow gauge rolling stock in 1963, storing many at his home in Longfield in Kent. As the collection grew he sought a more permanent arrangement and in 1976, he came to an agreement with the Festiniog Slate Group to move many of his locomotives to Pen-yr-Orsedd, where he planned to set up a museum to exhibit his collection and tell the story of narrow gauge

industrial railway An industrial railway is a type of railway (usually private) that is not available for public transportation and is used exclusively to serve a particular industrial, logistics, or military site. In regions of the world influenced by British ra ...

s. With the closure of Pen-yr-Orsedd, The Festiniog Group offered Morris space for his collection at their largest quarry, Oakeley. Morris' collection was moved there in May 1978. Further collections were brought to Oakeley and the Narrow Gauge Railway Centre was opened in the

Gloddfa Ganol Gloddfa Ganol (also known as the Gloddfa Ganol Mountain Center) was a museum dedicated to the Welsh slate industry and narrow-gauge railways, situated in the Oakeley slate quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog. It opened in 1974 and closed in 1998 follo ...

tourist attraction.

Tramways

In 1862 the quarry was connected to the

Nantlle Railway 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 ...

, with

narrow gauge 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 structu ...

lines extended to all but the highest levels of the quarry. Most levels of the quarry had both gauge and gauge trackwork, many with

mixed gauge In railway engineering, "gauge" is the transverse distance between the inner surfaces of the heads of two rails, which for the vast majority of railway lines is the number of rails in place. However, it is sometimes necessary for track to c ...

tracks. The Nantlle Railway connection was used up until 1963, while the internal gauge lines continued in limited use until the end of quarrying.

Locomotives

References

* {{Welsh Slate Quarries Llanllyfni Slate mines in Gwynedd 1979 disestablishments in Wales Railway inclines in Wales Industrial railways in Wales Railway lines opened in 1862 2 ft gauge railways in Wales 3 ft 6 in gauge railways in Wales Dyffryn Nantlle

History

Narrow-gauge railway museum

Tramways

Locomotives

See also

References