Slate
One of the places we visited on our tour of Britain
was an old slate mine in Northwest Wales. This is the site of the former
Dinorwig Quarry that closed back in 1969. We were not looking forward to this
visit as we thought it would be boring. We were wrong. It turned out to be a
very interesting place to visit.
Dinorwig
Quarry
Apparently the slate industry in Wales began during the Roman period and grew slowly until the early 1700’s. Then it grew rapidly until the late 1800’s. The Dinorwig Quarry and another nearby quarry, Penrhyn, became the two largest slate quarries in the world. For various reasons, the slate industry began a decline in the 1900’s leading to the closure of most of the larger quarries in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Dinorwig
Quarry with Slate in Foreground
What is left of the Dinorwig Quarry is now a slate
museum. Part of the tour took place in a small auditorium where a gentleman
showed us how slate used to be split manually using a hammer and chisel. When
asked who would like to try it, many people on our tour volunteered our son
Andrew since they knew he could speak the Welsh language. I took a video of
this event and present it here for your viewing pleasure.
There were many buildings with a plethora of equipment
leftover from the slate production days. All this was self-guided and there was
more to see than we had time to look at. Here are a couple of photos.
The UK’s economy is based on many things, but as we
rode through the countryside in Scotland, England, and Wales, it appeared that
much of it was based on sheep, goats, cattle, and horses. But given that the UK
has the sixth largest economy in the world (based on GDP), it is obviously based
on more than that. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to find out what
those are.
Outside
Rhayader, Wales
Outside
Rhayader, Wales
Rhayader, Wales
The Cotwolds, England
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