Ynys Y Pandy slate quarry

A failed slate quarry

This old slate factory in Wales has been unemployed for a century and a half. Slate was only produced for 15 years, a commercial failure in 1850.

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Contains Background Information

According to Coflein, the Welsh inventory for immovable heritage, the Ynys-Y-Pandy slate factory was built between 1856 and 1856.

The slate was supplied via a narrow-gauge railway from the Gorseddau quarry, 3 kilometers away. The slate was brought into the factory through this gate.

Hydropower

A slot in the side wall testifies to the presence of a water wheel, which drove the machines in the factory.

Commercial failure

In the record year of 1860, more than 2,148 tons of slate passed through the hands of the workers every year.

But production quickly went downhill: the quality of the slate fell short, causing Ynys-Y-Pandy to go out of business in 1871. "It was a complete commercial failure," says the book Welsh Slate.

The three-story factory served as a cultural center until 1906, when the roof was removed and the factory crumbled.

Now, the ruin dominates the landscape, and the owner of the ruin, Snowdonia National Park, renovated the monument slightly in the 1980s.

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Six blast furnaces you can visit today

In the early nineteenth century, the industrial revolution swept across continental Europe and one steelworks after another rose from the ground. Europe had hundreds of blast furnaces, but since the mid-twentieth century, Europe's steel industry has been slowly going downhill.

A failed slate quarry

Hydropower

Commercial failure

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Industrial Heritage

Dark tourism