Historical background
The present workings at Penmaenmawr continue a tradition of
stone-quarrying which begins in the third millennium BC, when
Graiglwyd was worked for stone suitable for axe-making. It
was the third most productive of the Prehistoric axe-making
sites in Britain, after the factories of Great Langdale and
Scafell in the Lake District and around St Ives in Cornwall,
whose products vied with each other in Neolithic markets throughout
the island.
The first leases which indicate modern exploitation of the
Penmaenmawr outcrop for stone are dated 1833. In the first
instance operations amounted to extracting suitable material
from the unconsolidated scree slopes, flaking them into setts,
and transporting them as ballast on ships bound for Liverpool
. The early extraction pits were surveyed as part of the detailed
survey of the north slopes below the Graiglwyd. Within a decade
two independent quarries had been developed, one on the Eastern
flank (Graiglwyd) and the other occupying the western extremity
(Penmaen). Both quarries concentrated on sett production although
loose stone for ballast was of increasing importance. Crushing
mills were therefore established from the 1890s onwards and
production increasingly concentrated on this commodity thus
expanding at the expense of the sett making enterprises. The
two quarries were amalgamated under the same management in
the early part of this century and the joint operations linked
by a quarry railway. In the late 1930s the Graiglwyd quarry
ceased as a sett production unit and the eastern workings were
accordingly abandoned.
The present quarry at Penmaenmawr occupies the western part
of the outcrop and concentrates on producing aggregate for
road construction and for railway ballast. A new crushing plant
was installed in 1983 and the present output of the quarry
is 600, 000 tonnes per annum. The planned reserve of the quarry
concession is approximately 40 million tonnes, giving an estimated
life span for the whole operation of sixty years. Since quarrying
has been concentrated on the western Penmaen end of the outcrop
the summit of the mountain has been reduced by approximately
400 feet and in the process the whole prehistoric hillfort
of Braich y Ddinas was consumed in an operation that paid only
minimal attention to archaeological detail.
Key historic landscape characteristics
Inclines, stepped workings, crushing plant, clock
The quarry site is distinguished by a number of features which
can be clearly identified from the road and from the town.
These include the substantial clock-face mounted on one of
the storage bins in the eastern quarry, the remains of the
major crushing plant introduced in the latter years of the
nineteenth century, and the impressive series of inclines.
A number of items of historic machinery survive in the quarry.
The eastern quarry was landscaped in the 1980s.
Back to Creuddyn
and Arllechwedd Landscape Character Map
