The National Slate Museum (previously known as the Welsh Slate Museum and the North Wales Quarrying Museum) is located at

Gilfach Ddu Gilfach Ddu (also known as the Dinorwic Slate Quarry Workshops) are a series of well preserved Grade I listed industrial buildings built to serve the Dinorwic slate quarry near Llanberis in Caernarfonshire, North Wales. The workshops are a co ...

, the 19th-century workshops of the now disused Dinorwic quarry, within the Padarn Country Park,

Llanberis (; ) is a village, community and electoral ward in Gwynedd, northwest Wales, on the southern bank of the lake and at the foot of Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. It is a centre for outdoor activities in Snowdonia, including walking, ...

Gwynedd Gwynedd (; ) is a Local government in Wales#Principal areas, county and preserved county (latter with differing boundaries; includes the Isle of Anglesey) in the North West Wales, north-west of Wales. It shares borders with Powys, Conwy County B ...

. The museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of relicts of the

Slate industry in Wales The existence of a slate industry in Wales is attested since the Roman period, when slate was used to roof the fort at Segontium, now Caernarfon. The slate industry grew slowly until the early 18th century, then expanded rapidly until the lat ...

. The museum is an anchor point of the

European Route of Industrial Heritage The European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH) is a tourist route of the most important industrial heritage sites in Europe. This is a tourism industry information initiative to present a network of industrial heritage sites across Europe. The ...

(ERIH) and part of

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, branded as simply Amgueddfa Cymru (formerly the National Museums and Galleries of Wales and legally National Museum of Wales), is a Welsh Government sponsored body that comprises seven museums in Wales: * ...

History

The workshops which served the needs of the quarry and its locomotives, were built in 1870 on land created from the continuous tipping of spoil from the adjacent Vivian Quarry, and as a replacement for the store sheds which were previously sited there. Rail access to the works was by both

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 struc ...

(the quarry gauge) and narrow gauge (that of the Padarn Railway which carried the slate from the quarry to Port Dinorwic). Rails also entered the main yard through the main entrance. The quarry closed in 1969 and the site was opened on 25 May 1972 as the North Wales Quarrying Museum. The museum is now connected to the nearby village of Llanberis by the

Llanberis Lake Railway The Llanberis Lake Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Llyn Padarn) is a narrow gauge heritage railway that runs for along the northern shore of Llyn Padarn in north Wales in the Snowdonia National Park. The starting point is the village of Llanber ...

, which uses part of the building as its workshops. The museum reopened after receiving a £1.6 million grant from the

Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

and now has displays featuring

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edward ...

slateworkers' cottages that once stood at Tanygrisiau, near

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 12,000 ...

. They were taken down stone by stone and re-erected on the site. The museum includes the multi-media display, ''To Steal a Mountain'', showing the lives and work of the men who quarried slate here. The museum also has the largest working

waterwheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buc ...

in mainland Britain, which is available for viewing via several walkways. The waterwheel was constructed in 1870 by

De Winton De Winton & Co (1854–1901) were engineers in Caernarfon, Wales. They built, amongst other things, vertical boilered narrow gauge locomotives for use in Welsh slate mines and other industrial settings. At least six De Winton locomotives h ...

of Caernarfon and is in diameter, wide and was built around a axle.Plaque on the wall of the museum Close to the museum is the partly restored Vivian incline, a gravity balance incline where loaded slate wagons haul empty wagons back up.

Locomotives

The museum owns a number of locomotives from Welsh quarries

References

External links

National Slate Museum

National Slate Museum World Heritae Site
* {{authority control European Route of Industrial Heritage Anchor Points History of Gwynedd National museums of Wales Slate industry in Wales Industry museums in Wales Mining museums in Gwynedd Museums in Snowdonia Museums in Gwynedd Llanddeiniolen Articles containing video clips 1972 establishments in Wales Museums established in 1972