Historical background
An area of extensive slate quarrying, active from at least
the medieval period to the late twentieth century. Proprietary
constraints meant that the slate had to be worked in many separate
quarries rather than in one gigantic site as at Penrhyn and
Dinorwic, and geology and topography meant that the dominant
method of extraction was from open pits on the side or the
floor of the Nantlle valley.
Key historic landscape characteristics
Slate quarries, mills, pyramids, engine houses, tips
An outstanding landscape of relict industrial archaeology,
exemplifying the industry's technical development from the
mid nineteenth-century to the twentieth. Some of the surviving
machines are built on such an impressive scale as to form landscape
elements in their own right, such as the Cornish pump-engine
at Dorothea Quarry and the blondin rope-systems at Pen yr Orsedd.
Reworking of tips and some very limited primary extraction
threatens the integrity of these landscapes, and the recent
attempt to establish Dorothea as a commercial diving centre
has resulted in the destruction of historic features without
any recording. The massive slate bastions for the chain inclines
at a number of quarries are at risk from progressive dilapidation
and possible collapse.
Back to Caernarfon-Nantlle
Landscape Character Map
