A few years ago I visited the National Slate Museum which is located at Gilfach Ddu in North Wales. It was originally the workshops of now disused Dinorwic (Dinorwig) quarry and was built in 1870. The workshops catered for all the repair and maintenance work demanded of the quarry and its locomotives. The quarry which once employed well over 3,000 men was at its height at the start of the 20th century the second largest slate quarry in Wales (and thus, the world). The quarry closed in 1969 mainly due to a falling demand for roofing slate.

The works contained a foundry which could cast a wide variety of items from signs to fences to machine parts, there was also several forges and a saw mill along with machines to cut slabs of slate to various sizes. The machinery in the works was powered by overhead shafts driven by a huge waterwheel which is 50 feet 5 inches in diameter and 5 feet 3 inches wide and is the largest working waterwheel in mainland Britain.

The nearby narrow gauge Llanberis Lake Railway uses part of the building as its workshops.

Several of the old workshops have been converted into display areas with old photographs of the works and the quarry which gave a fascinating insight to the lives of the men who worked at the quarry. Although called a quarry much of the slate was extracted from underground mine workings by miners working initially by candlelight and was a very dangerous job as explosives were used to loosen blocks of slate.

As you will see from some of the photos it was raining very hard during my visit but despite the weather I thoroughly enjoyed my visit.

* This is the main entrance to the museum, and as you can see it's a huge place.

* This photo shows part of the area inside, the various workshops are arranged round this central square.

* This photo was taken from the walkway above the foundry.  It is set up to show how it would have looked when it was a working foundry. The boxes on the floor are molds for casting various items for the quarry.

* A photograph of two of the blacksmith's forges.

* These are some of the cutting tables where the slate was cut to the various sizes as required.

* Finally. This is one of the narrow gauge locomotives that would have been used to transport the waggon loads of slate around the quarry.

Thanks for reading the first entry of my blog. I hope you enjoyed reading it.